


The Place You're Promised

by FeverBlossom



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical language, Character Development, Character Study, Drug Abuse, Drug reference, F/M, My First Work in This Fandom, Realistic setup, Slow Burn, Slow To Update, Written for a matured audience, mature content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-05-10 07:41:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5577070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeverBlossom/pseuds/FeverBlossom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world had taken from her with one hand, and it had given back with the other. They say you can’t pick family, and you can’t help loving who you love. They claim she was a force that had happened in their lives, but in truth she knew they were all forces happening in hers. There are no happily-ever-afters in a wasteland.</p><p>CH1: Nora<br/>CH2: Codsworth<br/>CH3: Nick, Dogmeat<br/>CH4: Hancock, Bobbi<br/>CH5: Hancock, Fahrenheit, MacCready<br/>CH6: Hancock, MacCready, Dogmeat<br/>CH7: Hancock, MacCready, Strong</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Disclosure: The first couple of chapters are going to be slow while I set up our Sole Survivor. Things will get better, I hope. This is a slow burner focused on story and character development. This will also be updated slowly. Wastelands build for dark subject matter, be warned.

The bitter reality was that she had never been her own person. She could have stared from her frozen tomb and contemplated the absence of personal choice for all her years, had she not been, instead, preoccupied  with two century’s worth of hibernation. Not even after the shaking and the wretching, crawling across a timeless vault floor, reborn into a foreign and yet familiar world, did it suddenly transition. Rebirth had granted no fairytale remedy; it had only saved, for the woman, fear and isolation and deep, empty loss. Born again to suffer, and gifted no new empowering sense of direction or cause. Nothing beyond a desperate drive to reclaim the last vestige of her faded reality and former life. A ghost from a world blown away to nuclear dust.

 

Reflection.

 

A childhood blessed with the soft comfort and accommodation her father’s law firm provided for the family, it had been hers. It had paved her gradual pathway to a legal counseling degree. They had said, “Your father is an exemplary man. Do what you can for him.” She’d passed the bar, she’d made him proud. It had been an accomplishment. She’d been told, “Even more so for a woman.”  She’d framed her accomplishment, and up on the wall it had been hung. _This is me, this is what I have achieved_. It had been paper for pedigree, and not a moment after the wire went taut across the single nail, securely mounting the frame for proud display, did she not have her next duty already elected. Paper for pedigree, and pedigree for procreation.

 

Reflection.

 

He’d been a war hero; another poster child. A purple heart, medal of valor, and honorable discharge. The full package, all neatly wrapped with the tidy little bow of military-issued chem rehabilitation to secure the stars and stripes wrappings of national service. That had been Nate. He’d been charming, witty, and impulsively spirited. They’d met through mutual acquaintances at a fundraiser, and the impulsive charmer had set his mind on her almost instantly. She’d been receptive to his charismatic advances. They had said, “That soldier is an exemplary man. Do what you can for him.” When he had asked for her company, she had given it. When he had wanted more, she gave that too, and did what she could for him in the back of his glittering new Chryslus. When she had discovered the result of their coupling in the Highwayman’s backseat, they announced an engagement. She’d been told, “It is your duty as a woman,” and she was content with her position. She had pedigree and a hero for a husband. Nine months later and she gazed down into the baby-blue crib at the squirming bundle and thought: _This is me, this is what I have achieved_.

 

Then the world was burned away in nuclear fire.

The old world died. Nora was reborn into a new one.

  
  


_“If a flame is to grow there must be a glow.”_


	2. Something for Myself

Nate had once told her that war never changes. 

Perhaps it was so, Nora was no soldier and had no objection to the claim. War might not change, but Nora had found herself in a position to see exactly how war could change the world. She could look out from the hill where the vault entrance plunged deep into the earth, straight beneath her feet, gaze out in any direction at all, and could behold the change that the ravages of war had blessed over the land. She had no bearing, no understanding, of how much time had really passed since she had watched nuclear flame erupt over the horizon. Atomic destruction sending hot genocide flashing across the expanse, whipping through her hair. One big, final bright light as her reality began that dark descent. 

When she had ascended from her maze of the preserved dead, over two hundred years later, reborn into a new world as helpless as she had been born into the old, it was Codsworth who informed the madam how long it was that she had been locked beneath the ground. It was Codsworth who kept her alive in those first, initial days. 

After the nauseating escape from her cryogenic crypt, Nora had been too shocked, too devastated, to formulate any plans on how to continue living. She wasn’t made of the grit to simply shrug aside all her loss, all her sense of utter abandonment. She’d spent the first half of her first day in the old-new world huddled in one of the forgotten Vault-Tec trailers. Unknown to the sole escapee, the metal heaps had withstood the last two hundred years, rusting and warping beneath the irradiated sky. Nora had quietly slipped inside one and curled herself up into a corner of the dirty floor. Nate was dead. Shaun was gone. The bombs had dropped, and she didn't understand how a person could simply close their eyes one moment, open them again, and the world as it had once been was no longer there. It was dizzying.

It was the thought of Nate now dead, and Shaun spirited away, that eventually drove Nora from her catatonic shock and helplessness. Gazing into her palm at the two tiny bands of gold catching the dejected light from the off-color sky, Nora had had her first lucid thought since her escape from Vault 111. She'd made a promise, a promise that she would get back what had been stolen from her; stolen from her husband. She'd get help, and she'd find their son. She'd find justice for Nate. Nora’s first brave step towards this promise was making her way back down the little dirt pathway to Sanctuary Hills. Nora had to get home, had to get herself out of the suffocating hold Vault-Tec still held over her. She had a stomach churning compulsion to undress, to change. A compulsion to rid herself of the vault suit that clung to her like a death shroud, like dead skin. Once she'd shed herself of the vault’s tainted reminder, she'd be able to contact whatever authorities were in charge now that the war had finally hit the homeland, and she'd be able to begin making good on her promise. 

Nora pocketed their wedding bands. In her last goodbye, she’d taken both rings. They hadn’t stolen every last piece from her. She’d kept something for herself. Picking her way back down the trail they had previously taken, Nora had to stop, halfway back to the Hills, to wretch into a bush. Whether the after effects of the cryogenic pod or the upset over the tragedy she'd risen from, She couldn't say what had left her more nauseated. She'd spat out a few times, face twisting at the sour tinge, and into Sanctuary she emerged.

It was nothing of the home Nora had once known. Where green lawns had once spread immaculately under an autumn sun, gleaming cars once adorned the fronts of residences, and houses had stood proudly erect, bright paint welcoming in friendly shades, there was now a graveyard to these memories. It had taken Nora a few minutes of silent appraisal to adjust to this new view unfolding out on either side of her. This was war. This is what war could do. Nate had always told her about the ugliness of warfare, but what a tragically vivid appreciation she was suddenly able to have for it, standing there, amidst the wreckage of what had once been beautiful. 

Nora had the presence of mind to be grateful, however. The bombs could have dropped a lot closer to home, she had reasoned. The warheads could have leveled out Sanctuary and every neighborhood around for miles. How would she have found help to locate Shaun then? 

The only help she had succeeded in finding, at that time, had been Codsworth. 

The ever-faithful Mister Handy had been Nora’s first contact in the new world, and the first one to explain the gravity of the reality she had awoken to. Two centuries beneath the world, left sleeping like some forgotten relic, and up above life had spun on. How could a regular human being simply close their eyes one moment, open them again, and the world as it had once been was over and done with two hundred years ago? The magnitude of the situation had crushed her. What had felt to her like a moment in the vault had been a lifetime twice lived. Nate had been dead for two centuries. They had kidnapped Shaun, and Nora had no knowing of  _ when  _ they had they done it. Had it been the day before? Had it been a year ago? A hundred years ago? Was their son even still alive? It was suffocating, and as the Mister Handy attempted to be of good use to his lady of the once-house, and helpfully explain to her the current environment above ground, the further Nora slipped away into the abyss with each thing she learned.

  
  


A day turned into three days, three into six, and on the seventh day, Nora ran out of food. Codsworth had turned to pillaging through homes in order to keep his mistress fed. To the robotic butler’s great dismay, he’d watched the lady of the house slip into a listless state of utter indifference. Indifferent to her needs, and indifferent to the dangers of the wasteland. He’d warned her, so very duteously, in regards to the threats of the land. The feral packs of vicious dogs that might wander through, sniffing for scraps. Groups of violent men that may sweep into an old neighborhood, looking for anything worth the salvage. The beastly creatures that now roamed the barren landscape, that she had to be wary of. Codsworth just couldn’t appreciate the lack of interest the ma’am had in mustering forth some kind of defense. When she had failed to even show the basic interest of providing for herself, Codsworth had faithfully picked up his old role of assisting the madam with her needs. He’d dig through half-destroyed pantries and fish out a two hundred year old box of sugar bombs, spend the next hour or two convincing the mistress to eat it. He mustered up the task of protecting the ma’am, defending her gallantly against the fearsome bloatfly or two that would hover into their neighborhood. 

Despite his best efforts, however, Codsworth found himself primarily distracted by a growing sense of inadequacy. Like a plant that just wouldn’t take to a new pot, the General Atomics robot could not compute why the madam was not springing back to vitality now that she was returned home. 

Codsworth had endured long decades of isolation and abandonment, and for the most part he could say, with some pride, that he had managed to keep himself from utter disrepair. He hadn’t exactly fallen apart. He liked to believe that unlike some  _ other  _ Mister Handy models, he’d been made within the good pedigree parameters of true manufacturer satisfaction. As for the cognitive anguish of having nothing but an abandoned home to attend to, Codsworth had done his best to keep his focus on other more material matters. Matters like the constant war against mold setting into the damp walls after another rainfall. Battling the rust and warp of metal frames, bloating wood puffing up and splitting open. His tireless and thankless crusade against the devastation wrought over the kitchen linoleum. 

When the ma’am had suddenly materialized from the dust and dirt of the neighborhood, so suddenly  _ there  _ as the family had so suddenly  _ gone  _ the day the air sirens began, the overwhelming sense of everything over the past two centuries nearly overrode the Mister Handy’s functional capabilities. The robotic butler had done his best to hold himself together, reassured that with the mistress back, things were bound to improve. Only they hadn’t. No progress had been made in the week that passed, and Codsworth was growing keenly suspicious that there was some human element he was simply failing to grasp. 

Two days ago the Mister Handy had found it necessary to travel out beyond Sanctuary in order to scavenge food goods to bring back to the madam. He’d had to warn off some lone dog sniffing around the neighboring Red Rocket, but he’d found no hostiles and two cans of cram for his efforts. Yesterday he'd found it necessary to brave the ruins of old Concord. Codsworth had cautiously raided a couple collapsing homesteads for water and edibles, and had silently appraised a firefight eruption two streets away from an inconspicuous alley. The shootout had been short lived, but both parties had sustained casualties. The Mister Handy was well-educated in raiders, and raiders were most obviously one side to the confrontation. The other appeared just another wandering group of scavengers or weary settlers, but Codsworth hadn't risked making contact to verify. Not even after the raiders had retreated and the settlers had collected their fallen comrade did the Handy approach. He'd long ago learned that keeping to himself was the best prevention for catching bullets. Humans were remarkably eager to fire upon their own kind in the post-war world. The chances of attack only increased the less human one looked. A day later, however, studying his madam as she listlessly shuffled through her broken down home, dark hair a stark contrast to the lack of color over her face and against her cream dress, Codsworth reasoned that perhaps human contact was what Nora was in need of. She’d always had the sir and baby Shaun before. The Mister Handy decided it was worth the risk if the ma’am could be revived by the human element that he himself couldn’t provide for her. 

That evening, out of dinner and options, Codsworth brought up Concord to Nora, and the potential group of settlers he had descried in the ruins of the city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for sticking with me. :)  
> As mentioned, the first few chapters will be a set up for establishing Nora. I'm going to do my best to avoid spending too much time on scenarios that have been covered a hundred times by now. As always, prompts are welcome, and thank you for reading!


	3. Least Favorite Life

She clutched at the rifle, hands already gone clammy. She adjusted her grip, hating herself for the sweat she could already feel between her fingers. It was frosty, and the breaths puffing before her nose were misted, but he'd made her take her gloves off while she was set up to be pulling the trigger. She had thought her hands would have been too numb to sweat, but she had miscalculated her nerves. He was making her nervous. She wanted to make him proud, but killing things had never been part of her reality. That had always been his. Her legs were going dead below the knee, folded beneath her where she sat over worn tarp. How long had they been camped out here in one spot now? Light snowfall piling up over them as they patiently waited.

Movement caught her attention, and Nora instinctively squinted a blue eye shut as she peered through the rifle’s scope with the other. She could make it out past the expanse of barren trees; a lone stag. Beside her, a set of tactical binoculars peered out with her.

“When you have the shot,” he breathed.

She hated these expeditions. It was uncomfortable, it was unpleasant, and she never felt that she was any good for it. Yet he'd broker no room for argument, and so Nora had no option but to accompany him out on these hunts. She'd made a life of meeting the expectations placed before her, there was nothing in her that thought now would be any different. Resignation glared apologetically from the cross hairs, and after a full minute of watching the lone beast slowly reveal itself from the naked thicket, bones gone stonework with how hard she was braced, Nora pulled the trigger. The shot was like a firecracker firing off in her ear. She wasn't looking through the lens any longer, but she could see the stag flipping like a hare. For an icy moment, Nora thought she'd missed the killshot. That gut churning guilt seizing her up in a strangle hold. The stag lurched for the trees. Nora felt the instant heat of shame creep over her face, and then the animal convulsed and drove itself into the powdered ground. Beside her, Nate rose to his feet.

“See? Bullseye.”

Nora stared out to the brown lump that had gone still. She felt no sense of pride, no satisfaction for her kill. Nate was proud for her. Nate was the one taking satisfaction from her success. Nora felt nothing but a dull sense of relief. Relief for the end of it and for having avoided disappointing him. They'd collect their trophy and they'd be heading home the sooner for it. Every season she'd silently whisper a prayer they'd find no quarry. Every year she felt that lame upset over another life she had stolen. The first and last time she had ever voiced her reticence in taking life, even of a simple creature, Nate had laughed until she felt foolish for having brought up her feelings. It wasn't that he was being cruel, and she had understood that even then, it was simply that he found her tender upbringing amusing. He'd told her so on more than one occasion. Nate and his brothers had grown up fishermen and hunters, and then as a man, he had enlisted on the war front.

Nora had never handled a gun before she met Nate. Her father had been a sportsman in his youth. On the subject he'd regal, “hunting has always been a stately sport.” Personally, she'd never found anything stately about it. Staring silently upon the mounted faces of long dead game adorning her father's low lit study, she'd felt nothing but a vague sense of pity. The false eyes staring glassy and sightless forever on, Nora always felt that taxidermy beasts had a disfigured sort of stature. They never appeared, to her, as pleasant to look upon as the living, breathing thing.

Crunching through the snow, the pair approached the stag. At closer inspection, Nora could see her bullet had passed through the lungs. What Nate had called the “boiler room;” where she'd been taught to lodge her round. A light froth of blood had bubbled from the stag’s snout. To her right, Nate crouched down, dark eyes appraising the dead animal.

“That was a clean shot. You're getting good, and fast. Probably should start working you to the brain pan now.”

Nora stiffened, attention caught on the small, bloody hole she'd made in the deer’s side.

“We can go back to shooting cans, can't we? Haven't I shown you I can shoot an animal by now?”

Nate’s eyes crinkled slightly at the sides. He was growing amused with her again.

“It's not the same thing, shooting an object. Not like shooting at something alive. You have to grow as comfortable with one as the other.”

Nora’s legs were throbbing with the cold, having been folded for so long beneath her, and her patience with this ugly business she had no interest in was growing thin. Below her swelling aggravation, she understood why Nate was so damn insistent. He’d seen the war in person. He’d seen the price paid for it. He’d told her once before that in combat, casualties were not only paid in soldier lives. Conflict had no prejudice against the people it claimed in collateral. Nate must have seen something in her face because his expression shifted. The teasing smirk softened around the edges into something more compassionate.

“Life can be ugly… and while I’m grateful you’ll never have to experience it yourself, I’d never want you to become its victim either… should the worst happen. You understand me, Riley-girl?”

Her nose wrinkled, and the anger melted away like ice before an open flame. Nora couldn’t deny that she understood the pragmatic side of Nate’s petition, she just thought it was a cheapshot throwing out her childhood namesake just for the advantage it would lend him. Lenora had always been such a stuffy name, especially for a kid growing up. As a woman, she still preferred cutting it down to something less formal. When she had been young, she’d preferred using her middle name. She was beginning to regret ever telling Nate about it, though. Anytime he wanted to win some argument, out would slip the old “Riley-girl” trick. Nora lowered the hunting rifle.

“Is this going to be a thing with you?”

He blinked. “What?”

“Cheating to win.”

The sides of Nate’s freckled face stretched wide, the terrible grin that had caught her attention first at the pledge campaign flashing up at her. It was the first sign she’d read, back when they’d been introduced, that there was something just a little bit bad about the man. The noble young man, back from the front lines. It was something in the smile that told Nora he was bad in the right sort of way. The way that got her blood thrumming, that captured her undivided interest. For a young lady having lived an easy life of comfort and shelter, educated and well associated, that roguish grin had ignited a spark in her. She’d followed after it like an impertinent moth.

“What’s wrong, love?” he smirked, “Not sure you can go full term on this?”

Nora shoved him and Nate broke into laughter.

“You did this to me, you know.”

“Well, c’mon then. Let’s see if we can’t teach you to be a total badass yet. Stories to tell the kid one day, how his mom was killin’ ‘em even outside the courtroom.”

“Oh, shut up,” she breathed, lips quirking as she hoisted the rifle up. “It could be a girl.”  
  


* * *

 

She clutched at the rifle, hands already gone clammy. She adjusted her grip, hating herself for the sweat she could already feel between her fingers. Beside her, the dog was snarling. Dogmeat had been a bristling coil of aggression since they had first started cutting their path through the ruins of Boston’s streets. The city had become a labyrinth of post war destruction. Everything was dreary filth - broken down buildings, half-collapsed walls, bricks and mortar scattered about in ruins, rusted out skeletons of long-dead cars, and the nightmare things that skulked about through this maze. It was surreal, and not for the first time did Nora find herself subconsciously disassociating from the grim reality of it all. More and more, she realized, she was feeling as though she had become the lead actress in one of her old world holofilms. That all these new horrors and wonders were a fantasy stage set for the telling. That all these new people she was meeting, encompassing the ghosts of former personalities she had known, were simply subconscious reflections projected out from her desperate and lonely mind. Some form of coping mechanism, she reasoned. Sometimes it felt like she was losing her mind.

Beside her, the dog whimpered. They were falling behind. Nora gathered her resolve and reached out to rub absently at the animal’s soft head. Her hands grew steadier. She was again surprised at the remarkable sense of comfort she found in Dogmeat’s simple company. 

“Sorry,” Nora whispered. She adjusted the strap to her pack and picked up the pace of her slow creeping, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Dogmeat. We better keep up, huh?”

At the end of the alley they slunk through, Nick had drawn to a halt. The battered detective, in an even more battered trench coat, turned to wait for the vault woman to catch up. True to his word, the synth had proven that he did indeed know the safest route through the deadly Boston streets. Nora had followed his lead like a faithful shadow, just as she had followed him out of Vault 114 on the day they had met. The way she had followed him throughout his manhunt on her behalf, all the way to Fort Hagen.

Looking upon her actions, on what she had so far accomplished… it felt as if Nora were gazing through a lense at someone else’s life. Someone else’s turmoil. As if she had become personally invested in an old world film. The soft edges, soft loss of focus, it lent a movie-like quality to her mental playback. The fear, the stress, the utter desperation that had driven her ever forward - it had all been like some kind of drug. The adrenaline she’d ridden while using a minigun, the boost to her confidence when wearing the power armor that Preston had let her keep, it had made her believe she was somebody else. While she had chased down Kellogg through the corridors of the old fort, she’d momentarily forgotten who she had been. All she had known was her maternal desperation to gain back Shaun.

Looking back, it had almost felt like her hand had been guided. Where she had choked and balked and hesitated before, she’d known only pure resolve. It had almost felt like one of her hunting trips with Nate. His cool, calming presence guiding her aim. Letting her know she had the shot. All the anger and confusion and desperate need to find some bit of justice - Nora thought she had been on the cusp of reclaiming her lost son, getting her answers. She’d thought she’d been so close. She’d shot the stag, but it had only darted out into the forest. 

At least the Institute had left her a trail of blood to follow.

Nora came up beside the detective. Nick swiveled his inhuman, yellow eyes upon her. She was still getting used to looking at them, but they no longer held the same feeling of unease over her as they initially had. Nora had begun to take comfort in their emotionless glow. As she had come to better appreciate Mr. Valentine, the more the clever and resourceful sleuth reminded Nora of her own father. There was a gentleness to the robot that felt familiar. A slow consideration in his gaze, and in the carefully picked words, that dredged up a well of emotions based on a childhood home. As her father had been her anchor in life, Nick Valentine was swiftly presenting himself as a lifeboat Nora could cling to, as the ocean around them crashed monstrously through the storm.

“Well, you feeling like a fight?” Nick drawled lazily, double-checking the pistol in his hand before turning his attention around to peer out from their alley.

“Not really,” was Nora’s wary but rapid reply.

“C’mon,” the synth encouraged teasingly, “don’t start selling yourself short just yet. You took out a fair number of Institute goons back in Hagen, all by yourself.”

“I had power armor and a minigun,” Nora deadpanned. “What’s out there?”

“Ferals,” Nick replied lowly.

Nora’s grip tightened into a clammy stranglehold over the rifle. She had to remind herself quickly to ease up around the trigger. If she started getting jittery and fired off a shot… there’d be no option as to whether or not they’d be fighting their way through the undead… or not-undead.  _ They’re zombies, but not zombies _ , she kept reminding herself,  _ they’re not dead until you make them so _ . At least that’s what she had come to learn about the irradiated people from Preston Garvey. Some were like everyone else, he’d told her. The rest were nothing more than monsters. The same as any other blight crawling over the wasteland, looking to kill what it could. Preston advised Nora to keep herself unnoticed by the dangerous kinds. He had warned her about ferals tending to travel in packs. Their numbers could overwhelm rapidly - as he’d informed her about Lexington.

“Let’s wait.” Nora quickly cleared her throat as it wavered. She didn’t want to reveal that she wasn’t as brave as Nick believed; didn’t want to disappoint the detective. His approval was beginning to mean a great deal to her. Nora didn’t want Valentine to realize that she hadn’t been brave in Fort Hagen so much as simply desperate and emotional. She was reluctant to share how much the irradiated post-humans frightened her. “Ferals move in groups. If we draw their notice, there’s a chance we may alert more. We might be outnumbered.”

Nick turned away from peering down the street and fixed his mechanical gaze back upon the woman and the dog. He seemed to silently consider the two crouched allies at his back, from beneath the brim of his tattered hat. After a moment, he nodded his ruined face and lowered the pistol.

“All right, then. We’ll wait for them to move off a bit. We haven’t much further to go anyway. Would be a shame to start making trouble here at the end.”

The two made themselves as comfortable as they possibly could, huddled down amongst the trash and debris of war and two centuries of conflict. In the filth and the stink of the Boston alleys, both companions took the opportunity to evaluate their supply of ammunition and aid. Nora rifled through the goods in her lap with one hand while the other remained looped around the collar fastened to the dog’s neck. Dogmeat was a dependable animal, but the last thing she needed was the eager canine tearing off after an enemy he caught whiff of or heard shuffling around on the street. Replacing the boxes of rounds back into her worn pack, she began taking stock of her medical aid. None of this was necessary. She knew the exact state of the contents of her bag. Three stims, six Rad-X, and four Radaway. Digging into her backpack to take inventory was just another way for Nora to cope with her situation. It distracted her. It gave her fidgeting hands something to manipulate, and saved her from jumping like a wild hare at every shadow and sound. Whenever she would finish reaffirming her stock, she would begin to reassemble the way it was all packed into her bag. Any task to occupy her mind and spare it from analyzing her current reality. She was interrupted before she had the opportunity for further fussing, as beside her, Nora felt Nick shift. The synth leaned his head over towards the end of the alley and again peered out to the street.

“Looks like the last of ‘em cleared the area. Now or never.”

They fell back into the familiar manner of their travel - Nick leading the way with Nora peering through her scope behind him, checking their route. Dogmeat always faithfully bringing up the rear. The only other interruption they encountered was a bloody attack between raiders and a few super mutants that all three paused to observe. A block away from their passing, Nora could watch from her scope as both sides tore into the other. She had finally come to comprehend raiders. Super mutants, Nora was still struggling to accept. Metal men, zombie humans, people with green skin - it was all as fantastical as a fiction, as film. It did nothing to convince Nora that this wasn’t all some terrible dream she was living. Something she would eventually awake from. How did a person wake up from a nightmare? They had to pinch themselves? Feel like they were falling? Die? Well she’d been hit, punched, even shot, and here she still was. It was surreal.

_ Nate… if you could only see what I’m becoming. Of all the things I thought I’d be… this is my least favorite. _

“Hey, you still there?”

Nora jumped. Nick was inches away from her, having come to a standstill. She hadn’t realized she’d been clocking out. She’d almost walked right into him. Nora silently berated herself for it. Losing sense of herself and her environment would get her killed. Hadn’t Nate, hadn’t Preston, impressed that upon her enough times for her to have learned by now? She had a wandering mind. Her mother had always told her so.

“Wh-What?”

“I said, this is it,” Nick repeated.

Nora took a step back, careful to avoid stepping over soft paws. Nick was indicating overhead and Nora’s eyes followed his replicated hand to the sign he’d been pointing at. It was a strange splash of color across a rather colorless wall, in a colorless sector of a colorless city. Bright hues against all the stark slabs of concrete and trash, and the occasional splash in varying shades of red. She read the sign aloud, eyes following in the direction of the neon arrow. 

“Goodneighbor.”

“Yeah, well, don’t let the name fool you,” Valentine drawled warningly. “Not a whole lot of  _ good  _ happening in this neighborhood. Lowest place in the Commonwealth. Everything not nailed down rolls through here at some point. Keep your wits about you.”

They followed the arrow’s direction to an end in the street. Barricades greeted the approaching trio, and another emblazoned “Goodneighbor” cast a neon glow from above a single doorway. Here, in this cul-de-sac of sorts, old pre-war posters clung to life across stained and grungy walls. A few broken beer bottles littered the ground that Nora was sure to kick aside for Dogmeat. Dozens of burned-down cigarette butts could be made out amongst the garbage, like gutter confetti. If there was one positive to this first-impression, it was that after traversing the filth and stench of the Boston alleyways to get to this settlement, Goodneighbor hardly looked or smelled any worse. From the outside, at least. Nora had long ago gone noseblind.

“Mind your gear and caps,” Nick muttered as a last minute advisory, and then they were pushing through the front door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season! Thank you for reading. :)


	4. Lately

The beer’s froth was slipping down the length of the bottle, leaving a ring of amber liquid over the wooden table. Not that the state of the table was going to suffer any further irreparable damage. The entire surface was tattooed in the pockmark burns of countless cigarettes smudged out into the wood, stains of questionable origin long ago ingrained into its very fiber, and the various initials carved into the mess with knives and nails and any other tool on hand. Nora’s eyes roved over meaningless names and letters without truly seeing them. Her thoughts were elsewhere. She felt lashed down to her seat, a filthy and tattered sofa, with the weight she had suddenly found yoked over her shoulders. Somewhere off to the right, Magnolia’s soft keening carried over to a new song. The sultry lounge act was lost on Nora, the only words she could hear carried a more distinct tinge to them. Something metallic and distant and not fully human.

_ “Heh... I was right. Should’ve killed you when you were on ice.” _

Probably the most unsettling aspect of hearing those departing words from a dead man was watching Nick’s lips move to form them. It had sent frost through her veins, a cold that had gone as deep as the nitrogen of Vault 111. Somehow, even beyond death, Kellogg had still managed to cast his shadow over the people Nora cared about. It was also a grim reminder of the difference between people like her and Valentine, and people like Kellogg. Regular people and monsters. Yet… a voice reasoned, hadn’t Conrad Kellogg once been a regular person? Hadn’t he once had a home of his own? A family he loved? A child? Was that what the wasteland of post-war America did to people? Did it seep under the flesh like so much radiation, twisting and warping lives into ruins of what they had started as? A slow, corroding poison.

Nora was already shifting. She could feel the change as much as see it. Physically, the alteration was most apparent. The glossy dark shine of her hair was fading out into a greasy, dull sheen. The healthy curve of her soft figure had started diminishing into something narrow and hard. Where once she’d painted on the glamor of eyeshadow and lip paint, now she flaunted discolored circles beneath her wary eyes and the healing scabbing of a busted lower lip. Yet the most startling change, to Nora, was her growing indifference to it all. Once, in a lifetime lived beyond a dream, these sorts of terrible perils would have mattered. It was shocking, in a distant manner of reflection, to note how little they appeared to matter now. There still remained a vague sort of understanding that this wasn’t what humanity was intended for. That the lawless violence and murder and chaos was not a thing to have ever been deemed acceptable. Now, Nora could see how that rational understanding was fading beneath a resigned acceptance for what currently was.

Was this how the change happened? Was this how fathers and husbands became men like Kellogg? A slow, corroding poison? Was it already starting on her, seeping beneath the flesh?

That would have frightened Nora the most if not for the bigger issues pressing their weight against her brain, pressure beating its fists against the insides of her skull. She was frightened for Nick Valentine. She knew the detective would volunteer to accompany her to the furthest corners of the Glowing Sea. Somehow, the two had found themselves inexplicably invested in one another, and for that, Nora knew she couldn’t ask it of the synth. Two old world souls finding a strange comfort in the presence of the other - it was something she couldn’t see lost. It had almost felt like a selfish betrayal to risk Nick over what possible information Kellogg had stored away within his cybernetic components.  _ His remains _ , Nora thought, emptily. It would certainly be selfish to expect the replicated man to escort her all the way to what could likely be her death.

Again, the difference between men like Conrad Kellogg and men like Nick Valentine was made starkly apparent. The detective had the wits and keen sense to have made a living in this wasteland, but it wouldn’t save him from the ruthless maniacs roaming the streets. Nora couldn’t afford that risk. The very thought of it brought a cold anxiety. Beyond true understanding, Nora knew she needed Nick intact. Available for her like a father. That familiar comfort. She had to know that an old world soul could remain - that it could survive a corruptible wasteland. Kellogg, however, had been a mercenary; a killer. That’s what Nora suddenly found herself in need of. A gun she could hire to ensure that she got to where she needed to be. A mercenary on her side. Her faithful suit of power armor had been shot to shit, and Sturges had informed her that they’d need to stockpile a wealth of supplies to repair the damage done. For now, in place of armor, she’d have to find a contract killer.

There was a pause in the flow of chords that tugged Nora’s attention back to the little metro-bar she was seated in. Magnolia’s tune of “it’s good to be a good, good, good, good neighbor” securing Nora back to her place in the Third Rail. The beer on the small, dirty table was gone. She hadn’t even noticed it being swiped. If Nora had recently discovered herself in the market for a gunman, she’d thought of all places she’d found the spot for garnering one in Goodneighbor. She was disappointed to discover that not even hiring a lowlife from the slums was a simple business. The most obvious choice had been the brute at the front entrance, but the mayor of the town had seen to it that the option was no longer feasible for Nora. Or anyone, ever. It monopolized business solely to the mercenary occupying the adjacent backroom of the Third Rail. It was good for his end of the trade, but terrible for Nora’s. The former gunner, MacCready, as she’d come to understand it, was taking full advantage of being the only gun currently on the market. The mercenary was demanding two hundred and fifty caps for his services, and on that he would not flinch. It had placed Nora in a predicament.

The demanded fee was nearly everything Nora had managed to scrounge and save over her grueling quest across the Commonwealth. Handing it over was forfeiting the funds to purchase much needed supplies from caravans. Supplies that were decidedly necessary for repairing her damaged armor. That wasn’t even taking into consideration the medical supplies and radiation treatment she’d have to barter for in order to tackle the irradiated desert called the Sea; and her ammunition was running dangerously low as well. She’d never before experienced an ordeal like confronting Kellogg. She’d never dreamt such a thing could have ever been her reality. The toll it had taken had cost her dearly in the supplies that kept her alive in these wastes. Losing two hundred and fifty caps would be a staggering step back from progressing forward. It had been a massive decision to weigh, and so she’d thought to buy herself the time to ruminate it over in the Third Rail while she waited for Amari to complete a final diagnostic evaluation on Valentine. The detective had objected, but Nora had insisted upon it.

“Damn, sister. Have you been visiting Fred Allen?”

Nora’s attention jerked violently upwards. John Hancock was watching her, standing beside the opposite couch. How long had she been clocking out again? She reached instinctively for her pack, and felt the bag's comforting weight beside her. A wandering mind, her mother’s voice echoed for the second time in a day. The mayor held a bemused expression - or what Nora imagined looked closely like a bemused expression. It was a difficult thing to decipher, what with nothing but a mostly-demolished face and a pair of inscrutable orbs of black to try and read. Ghouls were difficult things to grow accustomed to looking at, and Nora was still struggling to meet their eyes without openly gawking.

“What?”

A disfigured hand gestured outwards to her, tattered cuffs rolling with the motion. “I asked if I could get you a beer, vaultie.”

Vaultie. Of course. She hadn’t really anticipated that slipping back into the Vault 111 suit would have marked her as somehow an easy target to the rest of the world. It hadn’t been her first choice, and far from what she had envisioned herself willingly changing back into. The first time she had ripped the suit off, it had been the last time she thought she’d ever touch the garment again. As things had unfolded, however, Nora swiftly realized that marching out into the city in nothing more than one of her old world dresses was no longer feasible. When Sturges had appraised all the garments Nora had produced for his evaluation, the vault suit had been the gear selected. Granted, the brilliant blue and yellow theme was far from ideal for stealth, but it was nothing a tattered old traveling coat couldn’t mostly conceal.

Taking the opportunity to shift her consideration from her choice of wear to the ghoul’s, she hardly felt like the post-human before her was one to judge. The mayor of Goodneighbor was all show and swagger, from what Nora had so far appraised. He could be seen dealing out drugs, collecting city revenue, and murdering his own citizens with the same self-assured ease that leant him the casual slant to his posture currently on display. His apparent decision to ransack the historical wardrobe of old Boston deflected none of his confidence. Frills, tricorn hat, buckled boots - it was as if he were rather proud of his flamboyant ensemble. Nora thought he looked like some kind of costumed vigilante. Not that she’d openly admit that to a man who publicly executed his own citizens. She kept her gaze neutral and hoped he wouldn't be long.

“I’m all right.”

Hancock scoffed, voice a typical ghoul’s rasp. “Who comes to a bar to stay dry?”

“I’m waiting on someone.”

The corners of the mayor’s withered mouth drew upwards. “Yeah? How’d you and good ol’ Nick figure out? He workin’ some case for you? Or are you like his sidekick or something?”

“We're on business.”

The ghoul dropped down into the couch on the other side of the table, uninvited.  _ Mayoral perks _ , Nora mused.  _ Inviting yourself to any party _ . She tried to turn her attention to Magnolia, feign interest in the woman's mellifluous tune. To her disappointment, the singer was cooing some apology to excuse herself to the bar. Nora didn't want to be outright rude and ask the man to leave, but she was far from the kind of mindset needed to entertain an elected drug peddler. She had calculations to consider. A decision to make. The memories of a dead man’s memories haunting her like pictures burned into the back of her eyelids. All she wanted was to avoid trouble and leave as quickly as she could. Finn’s body flashed across her eyes. Avoid  _ more  _ trouble, at any rate, and avoid any further stabbings. Her gaze paused over the wet ring seeping into the scarred table. Avoiding pickpockets was also a real concern. If she couldn’t find another alternative, she’d need every single cap she had to afford that ex-gunner. First, however, she had to make sure Nick was well, and that the glitch with Kellogg had simply been a phantom’s passing and nothing more.

The smell of nicotine brought her meandering thoughts back. Nora’s attention rose up fractionally and settled on fabric, bright red in color. The mayor was still sitting across from her. Grudgingly, the woman raised her eyes up to find the ghoul silently appraising her. He was slouched languidly across the ratty old sofa, lanky arms drooped over the back and spindly legs stretched out like there wasn’t a care in the world. There was a cigarette in his left hand, nearly half burned away, and the smoke he breathed loose hung around his side of the table like a lonely pet. Upon catching her attention again, dark eyes that had been narrowed to black slits of contemplation livened up to shiny, bright orbs. The ghoul smiled. It showed off more of his teeth than it would have had he any lips left to his name. Nora noted that said teeth were uneven and stained with the tell-tale traces of his dirty habits.

“So, sister, you got a ride of choice?”

She blinked. “Excuse me? A what?”

The smile broadened. Nora remembered him smiling when he’d moved Finn in close.

“Chems. You got a preference?”

Nora couldn’t remember a moment that she’d missed the detective’s presence more than at that moment. Maybe she could just excuse herself and go back to the Memory Den and try the mercenary later. Deal with how she was going to explain to Nick that she was going to travel the Glowing Sea without him. What she did, however, was try her damndest not to think of Nate. How Nate would have reacted to seeing her in a place like this. Dealing with these sorts of people. How he would have handled the entire situation for her. Then there was reality, its cold hand on her shoulder. She didn’t have Nate anymore. She hadn’t had him for a while. Her husband was gone, her parents were gone. She no longer had the old comfort of the buffers that had always cushioned her from the world. That was Nora’s old life, before she fell into a hole and woke up in a dream. The house had crashed and when she’d opened the door, it hadn’t been a world of wondrous color before her. The world of color, she’d left behind. The door had opened, and there’d been nothing but the bleak.

The vaultie kept her seat and leveled a steady gaze towards the peeled-back face of her present company. “Thanks, but I don’t need any of your drugs.”

There was a pause, and to Nora’s surprise, the ghoul barked out a short, rasping laugh.

“Shit, you ain’t one of them Diamond City types, are yah?”

“Diamond City?”

The withered hand clutching the remains of the butt waved around limply on a narrow wrist. The cigarette threw circles of trailing smoke after it. “You know, the ‘Great Green Jewel’ folks can’t brag loud enough about.”

“I’ve been to Diamond City. I don’t know what you mean by ‘type’, sorry.”

“Ah, forget it,” Hancock brushed off. Then he was abruptly moving his body forward, leaning across the table with a pack of cigarettes held out in his hand. He thumbed one stick an inch above the rest, holding it out for the woman. “You at least smoke?”

She’d smoked a little back in college. Nora had never bought a pack of cigarettes to her name, and the times she’d taken one offered had been infrequent and mostly at social gatherings. She’d never once made a habit of it, but it wasn’t something she had exactly disliked either. Considering it from the current moment, Nora figured she hadn’t had a smoke since she found out she was pregnant. Regardless, she made no move to accept the light. Nora wasn’t even aware she’d faltered. Her eyes had found the disfigured grooves and discoloration in the ghoul’s outstretched hand, and her attention had been morbidly drawn to the appendage without truly realizing it. That was, until the moment spanned an unmistakable point in which both would be lying to say it hadn’t been noticed. The pack was just as swiftly snatched back.

“Yeah,” the mayor remarked lowly, “that's what I figured.”

Nora silently watched the ghoul scan the top of the table before he stubbed out the burnt down butt into the wood, adding another blemish to the tapestry. She hadn’t favored the tone to the mayor’s comment. It suggested that the matter hadn’t exactly been dropped. If there was an opportune moment to grab her gear and leave the musty bar behind, it was now. She reached out for her pack.

“So-” Hancock started, tone bringing Nora’s hands to a pause, “- and you gotta be straight with me on this - are you some kinda closet ghoul bigot or some shit? Or did you really  _ just  _ crawl outta some underground, prewar hole?”

Nora felt something under her skin prickle; something small that had ignited. The stress and the frustration had been kindle. The accusation was a spark.  _ Bigot _ ? Her gaze snapped back to the ghoul. He was fishing out the cigarette he had previously offered her, slipping it between his tarnished teeth. A lighter was procured from one of the red coat’s giant pockets.

“Or maybe…” the ghoul paused to bring his cupped hands up to the stick in his mouth. The lighter was flicked and a warm, red glow ignited across his face. He shot the vaultie a look over his hands, the black of his eyes reflecting the flame like some wild animal reflecting light in the dark. “...you find me just too damn attractive to stomach.”

“I just figured,” Nora started evenly, “that you might still have blood on your hands from earlier. Didn’t want to get any stains all over this big, blue vault suit of mine.”

The lighter snapped shut with a sharp click. “You talkin’ about Finn?”

“I’m talking about Finn.”

Hancock tossed the lighter carelessly to the tabletop and leaned back into the couch. The ghoul took a long drag from his smoke as he considered the woman sitting across from him. Nora watched the end flare up angrily as he pulled tirelessly. With those dark eyes, it was impossible to be certain what exactly the ghoul was studying. Nora subconsciously drew her coat around her tighter. Then, in one long exhale, a cloudy breath was at last freed.

“You had some kinda camaraderie with Finn, did yah?”

“Didn’t you?”

Hancock sucked in another breath and huffed out another cloud. “Look, it was a shame, what happened, but Finn had it comin’. Finn was trouble.”

“Trouble to who?”

“To you first-times.”

This time, Nora scoffed. “Please, mayor, don’t treat me like I’m an idiot just because I have a vault suit on. You didn’t murder a man for me, or Nick, or anybody else. I know a political maneuver when I see one. Murdering didn’t become a reality until Finn threatened your security to power.”

There was a long pause in which Hancock smoked and watched the woman through narrowed eyes, dark as a black lake. Trails of smoke wafted lazily up towards the cracked ceiling, partially obscuring the mayor’s ambiguous expression. It was impossible to guess what kind of response she’d receive for her statement. Nora realized, belatedly, that falling into analytical habits could potentially result in another town stabbing. It was difficult to say what merited execution, and what didn’t, in this trash heap of a city. She was falling into old habits, but old habits were hard to break. Nora had to remind herself that this wasn’t her old world, and she wasn’t trying to win a suit. It just felt a hell of a lot like it. Eventually, Hancock drew the cigarette from his mouth.

“You sure like throwin’ around the ‘murderin’’ word, don’tcha?” the ghoul observed around a mouthful of smoke.

“Well what word would  _ you  _ use, mayor?”

“Protecting.”

Nora shook her head in disbelief, unable to mask the disparaging expression the very thought provoked. “ _ Protecting _ ? The man hadn’t even drawn a gun on us. Nick quashed most of his bravado in minutes. In fact… the only person to pull any weapon at all was  _ you _ .”

The cigarette went sailing across the room, flicked irritably from mangled fingers. The wasted flesh between the ghoul’s eyes knotted tightly together beneath the brim of his absurd hat. With the smoke’s final embers languishing out over the Third Rail’s floor, the little glow cast over the man’s ruined face was lost. His expression became harder to distinguish in the dim lighting as he leaned forward again. “I did that because-”

“Because you were proving a point. I recall, mayor.”

There was a contentious hiss. “ _ Because _ I thought I was trying to protect some doe-eyed vault dweller from getting taken for everything she had.”

Silence reigned between the two, and while it came as another lame disappointment to the ghoul in a long-dead statesman’s coat, it came as a bitter backwash to Nora. In the space hanging between them, all Nora heard was another man’s voice.

_ “Girl with a tender face, those big doe eyes. It really brought it all into focus. I hadn’t really stopped to consider that before; I was young and full of bluster for war. When I got back, however… things changed. I saw life differently. When I saw you that night… well, it made me realize that if I could have a girl like you, it would make all of that sacrifice worth it. Even the parts I wasn’t proud of.  Having someone that guiltless to protect… it would have made the cause real.” _

There was a weight against her brain, pressure beating its fists against the insides of her skull. The tangible cloud of nicotine suddenly brought a sour taste to the back of her throat, and all Nora wanted was to get out of the bar. Get fresh air. Get away from this place and get back to what mattered. Get back her son.

_ “The thing about happiness is that you only know you had it when it’s gone. I mean, you may think to yourself that you’re happy. But you don’t really believe it. It’s only looking back, by comparison to what comes after, that you really understand that’s what happiness felt like.” _

I was content. I knew that.   
I never questioned if I was happy.

She was able to reach for her bag in a torpid stupor and rise lightly from her seat. The pack was carefully slung over her shoulder, rifle clattering from where it was strapped. In a polite tone, devoid of their previous discord, Nora excused herself with a simple, “Thank you.” She passed the mayor on her way to the stairs, catching a dwindling, “You’re a real downer, you know that, sister?” before she was climbing back up and out past the bouncer.

In the dirty streets of Goodneighbor, Nora found herself a quiet corner to be left alone. One of the neighborhood watch had been accommodating enough to let her know that the Diamond City detective had come out of the Memory Den looking for her, but he hadn’t remembered where Valentine had gone looking. The gunman had thought it to be the Rexford, which made sense to Nora. She’d mentioned the probability of checking out the beds for rent and deciding whether any looked anywhere decent enough to take a nap on. Lord knew it had been days since her last proper rest. But Nick checking the wrong venue afforded Nora a few minutes to recount her net worth of bottle caps and figure how many she would be left with after giving into the mercenary’s demand. She wasn’t fool enough to start pulling out handfuls of caps from her pack in front of shifty eyes, so she’d made it a point to find a quiet, empty alleyway to perform her financing.

As it wound up, she hadn’t been as alone as she’d anticipated.

Nora had only just pulled the pack from her shoulder when a voice hissed out to her from the gutter they called a back street. She’d startled like a deer, boggled when she couldn’t identify any person at all within eyesight. Then the voice had called out again.

“Hey, you.”

This time, Nora turned her attention towards the very end of the alley. She’d vaguely noticed the lone doorway when she had first meandered into the street. Now, from a little peep-out in the blue frame, she could distinguish two eyes peering out at her from a darkened face. It was unsettling to have been caught so off-guard, and Nora’s initial reaction was to take up her rifle. She could observe the face scrunching.

“Put that thing down. I’m not gonna hurt you. Lookin’ for work?”

Nora stiffened. The prospect of work meant the prospect of pay. It was possible this stranger had misinterpreted her dejected scrounging for someone hoping to find some last morsel of food or a missed cap or two to buy something to eat. She hadn’t managed to haul out her gains into the open; no one but Nick and Preston knew how much she had painstakingly saved away. Nora lowered her rifle and slowly clipped her bag shut.

“Work, huh? I’m listening.”

The face beyond the door nodded approvingly. “How would you like a job?”

Nora approached the doorway. She could distinctly see now that the face was that of a ghoul. A lady ghoul with a nest of brunette hair. Nick had told her they wouldn’t be an uncommon sight in Goodneighbor. “What kind of job?”

“Well… if you don’t mind a little manual labor, and don’t ask too many questions, you’re in. I’ll give you fifty caps to start. Interested?”

“Fifty caps?” The vaultie pulled a face for the woman’s appreciation. “Sounds pretty low for a vague, no-questions-asked gig.”

The irradiated lady pulled a face in kind. “Fine. Take a hundred up front.”

Nora felt her heart begin to race. “A hundred caps for some manual labor, then?” The mercenary was closer now than she’d ever anticipated.

“Oh, trust me. There will be much more later on,” the ghoul boded, and passed over a sack through the hole. Nora felt the weight of the caps land into her eager palms.

“How much more?”

A lipless mouth quirked upwards. “As much as your arms can carry.”

 

* * *

 

He looked doubtful and irritated with her, but there was a familiar waver to his eyes that she instantly recognized. It was a similar trait that she now found herself developing the longer she spent in this waste of a world. Something the old  Nora never had. Just another reminder of how she was changing. How the wasteland got beneath a person's skin, warped you from the way you started. Nora found a despondent humor in it.  _ Lately I'm not feeling like myself. _

“Really?” he asked skeptically. “As much as you can carry? Who is this lady?”

“Listen, if you agree to drop your price to two hundred caps, we can split everything we make off the job. It will be more than fifty cap’s worth to you.”

“I don’t know…”

“Or just stay. I can simply keep the winnings and purchase someone else’s gun. Hardly a rare commodity in the Commonwealth these days. With what I’ll be able to offer for services, shouldn’t be long before I get-”

“All right, all right. You strike a hard bargain. Deal. Two hundred caps, right now.”

Nora had never been so thrilled to part with bottle caps since learning of their post-war value.

“Pleasurable arrangement, MacCready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> <3 Thank you to the comments. Thank you to everyone reading and leaving a little love.


	5. Red Right Hand

She was hyper aware of her shoes. The filth encrusted along the sides, stains splashed over the toes and up to the frayed, makeshift laces. She’d never owned boots like these before, but Preston had been thoughtful enough to snatch the pair off one of the dead raiders they’d left to rot under the rain and the sun back in old Concord. They’d been pulled off the feet of some dead woman, a much closer fit than the massive boots the men had strapped to their corpses, but the shoes were still too large for Nora’s feet. The vaultie had compensated the best she could by doubling up her socks, though actual socks they were not. Using the sleeves of a ratty old sweater she had purchased from a trader called Trashcan Carla, Nora had fashioned the closest equivalent to socks she was likely to own in this new life. 

Bundling her feet thickly, Nora could almost pretend her footwear was a comfortable fit. “Better too big than too small,” Preston had beamed. Nora had remained skeptical of his positive outlook until she had started wandering. Truly wandering. From Sanctuary Hills to Diamond City, Diamond City to Vault 114, back to Diamond City and Fort Hagen after, and out to the slums of Goodneighbor. In all her life, she’d never had to live so exclusively on her soles, covering such malevolent terrain. Her feet had swelled at the abuse, and how they had ached. Nora had then gained an appreciation for Preston’s foresight, and for the extra space in her boots. Boots which had been stained and worn and tattered as new possessions coming into her property, and which now Nora added further abuse to as they began their new epoch with her travels.

Nora was hyper aware of these shoes. It was impossible to determine what color they had been originally. What she had now was an off-color splash of black, brown, and gray when dry. The recently added mirelurk blood would likely cast a rusted tint to the affluence of pigmentation after it had thoroughly set in. At the moment, however, her wet boots appeared a solid shade of black. Nora idly wondered if she’d be alive in the morning to see her boots dried - and then the fear crept back in again and the woman felt the compulsive need to start fussing through her pack. Maybe she’d just vomit inside it instead, expel a stomach full of nerves into her dwindling collection of medi-chems and ammunition, food parcels and her severely lighter load of bottle caps. She was supposed to have had half a pack worth of new caps. An armful, she had been told. What she had, in reality, was a two hundred cap deficit.

One step forward, two steps back.

Nora did not vomit into the sack of her bankruptcy, nor did she begin any compulsive sorting of wasted inventory. Not while the thuggish brute with the submachine gun was standing no more than five feet away, gloating as the woman grew another shade paler with each minute longer she waited outside. She'd once thought to sneak a look at the thug’s malformed face, try to grasp any inclination at all of what was in store for the mercenary and herself. She'd received an ugly sneer that had pulled at the gunman’s empty hole where a nose should have been. She'd kept her eyes on her boots afterwards. If opposing a request from the man in power warranted an immediate and public death, what did robbing from him sanction?

Her feet felt numb.

The door to the room she waited beside swung open, and the ex-gunner came swiftly striding out. Nora nearly startled, then she lunged towards the mercenary. He was keeping his eyes locked forward, towards the statehouse stairs, hadn't even spared her a parting glance. She nearly missed snagging his arm in the passing. She heard the door click shut.

“MacCready!” She paused. Was that her voice? Nora tried to lick her lips and found her mouth dry. “What happened?”

A glance from the corner of his eye was all Nora received before the merc was shrugging his arm free. “I told them the truth, that I was working for you. I was following orders.”

Nora watched MacCready carry on down the stairs. She entertained the idea of running down after him, just running out of the old Statehouse and straight for the front gate. The thought of the gunman watching her, and the ones on the lower floors, kept her where she was. She would never make it past them all, not with those submachine guns. Certainly not if her mercenary was flunking out. There was no moment since emerging alone from Vault 111 that Nora had felt so abandoned, and this time she knew it was her own fault. She’d been the one to tell Nick she’d hired help - and what a help it had turned out to be. It was startling how quickly her mercenary had bailed. There was a moment, while they had been lost down in Bobbi’s underground labyrinth, that Nora had thought MacCready would be an investment well worth the sacrifice. He’d been a reliable gunman, and the pair had even done rather well at watching out for one another. It was a bitter laugh that this was how their contract should terminate so prematurely. Nora thought helplessly to Nick, and felt so utterly alone. Diamond City felt a thousand miles away.

Behind her, the door swung open again. The bodyguard’s flat tone called out, “Let’s go.” The vault woman turned, legs gone as numb as her feet. She felt like a mannequin pulled along by a rope. Fahrenheit was watching her in lazy satisfaction, eyes heavily hooded. Nora marched stiffly past the armored woman, limbs rigged with fear and mind racing with adrenaline. She could fight her way out, if it came to it, she encouraged herself. She’d survived Kellogg, survived a deathclaw, survived the vault. If it came to dying here, she could snatch her rifle up and try shooting her way out. The gunmen outside would kill her in minutes, but she could always try jumping from the balcony. Making a run for the front gate. She was looking for her son, there was no way she was going to allow herself to wind up stabbed, shot, or hanged in this hovel.

Nora was vaguely aware of the door clicking shut behind her. The room she entered looked like raiders had once plundered it and the new tenants never thought to pick up afterwards. There was a pair of ratty couches, dubiously stained, facing one another, with a table scattered over in drugs between them. Along the back wall could be seen, what appeared to Nora to be, some junkie’s cookhouse. The room was a distant awareness, however. The woman was much more focused on another singularity - that they hadn’t thought to confiscate her pack. The weight of the bolt-action slung to the side of the bag felt like a lifeline. A rope tossed out to her as she was dragged out to sea. Along the far wall, the mayor was casually tossing aside an inhaler of jet onto one of the littered table tops. He turned as both women made their way inside the room. Nora could easily recognize him in all that tattered red, a color that boasted of presence, even in the hazy den. The interior was dusky with poor lighting and the lingering cloud of nicotine from several different smoldering ashtrays, but still the absurd outfit dared any not to take notice.

Fahrenheit came up alongside Nora, and the vaultie could feel the other woman’s hard appraisal without even looking. “Take off your pack.” Nora hesitated. “ _ Take off the pack _ .”

The tone brokered no room for argument, and Nora felt her bag slide from her shoulder. The clatter of her gun hitting the floor was the only sound for a moment, in the otherwise silent room. Then Fahrenheit was backing away to somewhere at Nora’s left and Hancock was swaggering in, eating the distance between them. Nora felt her stomach dropping to her feet. Would there be a blade sliding into her gut, right where her stomach had been? She watched the ghoul saunter near, the tail of John Hancock’s coat trailing out after him. Her pulse was racing. She wanted to check her pack, get the rifle in her sight, but she didn’t. She knew the hired muscle was watching, waiting for Nora to do something, anything. So she remained rigidly in place, her spine a plank of wood. If the ghoul got any closer, however… he'd force her hand. To Nora’s relief, the mayor stopped alongside the right couch to slant his lean frame against the furniture, arms crossed.

“Well, if it ain’t Bobbi’s little patsy. You know, sister, I had my initial suspicions that there mighta been a chance you weren't exactly flying my flag around town. Hittin’ my strongroom with Bobbi? Didn't know you were actually set on burning my colors, though.”

Was this the foreword to her judgement? The wasteland version of a preliminary hearing? Or did they simply circumvent the entire affair and cut straight to a verdict? Nora’s nerves were electric fire in her veins. The vaultie hadn't even realized she had started quivering until she tried to articulate how she and MacCready had been used, that it hadn't been their intention to rob Goodneighbor. Her tongue felt like lead, however, and nothing useful came but an idiotic stammer. It took the woman a helpless moment to realize that the quivering wasn't exclusively fear jangling at her nerves. Nora was surprised to feel anger running hotly through her blood.

The ugly truth of the matter was that Nora wouldn't suffer any remorse over Goodneighbor being ransacked at any point by any party. The filthy streets and the thugs hired to patrol them, the shifty looks from junkies and the sleazy bar owner, the drug pushing mayor and his bodyguard with the burned face, Nora felt no love loss if she never set foot in the town again. Her opinion was that if raiders stormed the place and leveled it to the ground, it might be an improvement for Boston. However, the absolute truth of the matter was that she hadn't any intention to rob the settlement herself - Nora was no thief - and that was what mattered. She’d been lied to, set up to look a fool at the end of somebody else’s rope. She’d been desperate, desperate enough to have fallen for a lie, and now the local magistrate was having a parade of it. It burned beneath her skin to see the mayor so self-satisfied with the situation. A killer and an addict; that he should play judge in all this was insulting.  

“MacCready and No-Nose had some colorful tales to tell,” the ghoul smirked, “I can say that.”

“I'm sure I have one of my own.”

Hancock’s head pulled to the side in a lazy semblance of some half-shrug. “That ain't necessary. I got what I needed.”

Nora bristled. “So that's it?” The woman's eyes slid to the left. Fahrenheit was still there, but the guard had moved herself further back to lean casually against the wall. “What happens now?”

“Well, let me tell ya,” Hancock grinned.

The mayor moved in closer - and the barrier was breached. Nora could only think of how smug the ghoul appeared in the moment, and her mind recalled vividly a similar smirk at the front gate, blade in a red right hand. It brought a sudden and wild tremor of fear. Then there was the singular thought, more palpable than her distress and outrage, more palpable than the two people in the room dangling her life on some ratty string…  _ Shaun _ . She'd missed ten years. Her son, in the hands of the people who had murdered his father. Ten years they'd stolen from her. Ten years and her child. In the glow of that singular reality, the little boy she had seen in a dead man’s memories was the only clear point of focus. Everything else… it was nothing more than white noise. In that singular glow, Nora had all the resolve she needed. She was going to get out.

With a desperate cry, the vault woman dropped to the ground, hands snatching up her rifle. How far was the drop from the balcony? Fahrenheit was already reeling into action. The barrel of the gun swung towards the surprised mayor. It wasn't that steep; Nora thought she could make the fall. The redhead pounced and the gun went off with a shot.

“Whoa!”

Nora vaguely heard the violent crack of wood splintering as a force collided with her side. Fahrenheit had tackled Nora to the floor, and both women scrambled to wrest control of the bolt-action. The trigger was squeezed and another deafening blast rang out. The guard jerked.

“ _ Whoa _ !”

A second pair of hands was attempting to pry the gun from Nora’s stranglehold. Her grip was impossible, the mad fear and adrenaline giving her the necessary strength to continue resistance. Nora clung to her weapon like it was her last lifeline to Shaun and survival - and in her mind, it was. She kicked and writhed against the bodies trying to press in on her. An arm had wrapped around her throat, and Nora felt her airway restricted. There was the sudden sound of the door to the room bursting open, and the raspy voice of the gunman outside calling “Boss!” A sudden weight dropped in over her, and Nora was aware of the mayor crouching down on the floor, over both women, as they kicked and struggled against one another.

“It’s okay,” Hancock called out, voice strained to inflect control over the mess, “go back outside. We’re all right here.”

“But… boss.”

Nora’s fight lessened as she felt the pressure of a hand on her chest, at her collar bone, patting over her coat reassuringly. Stained frills and torn velvet. Fahrenheit’s arm was scrambling for better purchase around Nora’s neck, trying to wrangle her into a choke hold, but through the tangle of bodies the vaultie could see the mayor trying to coax the gunman into going back outside. It was the woman's first indication since watching Bobbi being apprehended, and her being escorted to the statehouse, that this may not be the place she was meant to die.

“It’s all right, we’re cool. It’s under control. Just a misunderstanding.” Hancock looked down, catching Nora’s frantic glare. Ghoul or not, there was no mistaking the singular look those swarthy eyes were directing at her. “ _ We’re cool _ .”

The hand continued to absently pat at her thick parka, as if to allay her fears. There was a concentrated earnesty in the obsidian gaze locked to her own, and after a moment’s hard hesitation, Nora’s body eventually went limp. A moment after that and she felt Fahrenheit loosen her hold around her throat with a choleric, “Finally.” It suddenly became significantly easier to breath. The black splotches dancing across her vision began to clear. Nora gave a rough cough as the restriction around her throat snaked away.

“It’s all right,” Hancock cajoled the gunman. “Close the door behind you.” The sound of the entry shutting was followed by an agitated sigh from the ghoul, and then the mayor was lifting himself off both women. “Christ…C’mon. Get her up.”

From her left, Nora could feel Fahrenheit hesitate, then squeeze her shoulder warningly. “ _ Drop the damn gun. _ ”

“No,” the vaultie ground out between clenched teeth.

“Leave her alone, it’s all right.”

The bodyguard cursed, then grudgingly released her grip on Nora. Both women untangled themselves from the other and scrambled back to their feet, eyeing one another distrustfully. There was blood spreading from Fahrenheit’s left arm, and Nora figured her second shot had caught the woman when they had tusseled. The vaultie clutched the bolt-action tightly to her body and turned wary eyes back to the mayor. Hancock was studying the hole in the wall where Nora’s first bullet had lodged, having missed him by a hair’s breadth. After a minute the ghoul shook his head, ridiculous hat shifting side to side, and turned a scrutinizing frown towards their guest.

“I figured you for being wound kinda tight… but damn. You get that outta your system?”

“What’s going to happen to me?” Nora demanded, ignoring the derision. “I take it you aren’t planning on killing me afterall. So what about MacCready and Bobbi?”

Hancock’s noseless face wrinkled. “What about ‘em?”

“Where do we stand? Are we free to go?”

The ghoul’s attention shifted, and he waved a mangled hand towards Fahrenheit. “You’re bleeding, by the way. Go get a stim or something.” Fahrenheit’s indifferent tone of, “It can wait,” was swiftly objected by the mayor when he pointed a rather non-negotiable finger in her direction. “No, it can’t. Go get a damn stim and then bring me back one of Chuck’s strongest bottles off the top shelf. Grab one for yourself.” The guard looked ready to argue but Hancock beat her to the punch. “That’s your mayor speaking.”

With a rather disapproving look, the redhead turned on her heel and marched out of the room, sparing the vaultie a doubtful glance on her way out. Nora watched the hard lady go, feeling jittery after their scuffle. She licked her lips nervously and tasted blood. Her cracked lip that had been healing over had split open again. Her legs felt boneless. How could one day go so horribly wrong so horribly fast? It had started with so much promise, the promise of a day’s hard work and the worthwhile reward of that labor. Bobbi hadn’t been very forthcoming with details regarding the dig, other than excavating some underground tunnels to access a long forgotten fortune, but Nora had never dreamed the job was going to entail robbing from anyone. Most decidedly not from the sort of people who carried out civil justice in the manner that Goodneighbor did. This, she lamented, was why hindsight was termed a bitch. It was now plainly obvious why the lady ghoul had withheld sharing more about the job. Dirty, exhausted, broke, and frightened, this was far from what Nora had imagined would be in store for her after taking up with Bobbi No-Nose.

Initially, Nora’s fear was that she had been thrown to the sharks over the bad job gone south. Some scapegoat for slaughter. Bobbi had been immediately detained and there had been no telling what MacCready would say or do. Nora knew the mercenary had been pissed. She imagined he likely held her responsible for losing out on his bottle caps, especially after she had talked down his asking price for his services. The first bit of good news was the mayor’s current behavior. If it was anything to judge off of, it at least appeared that there would be no blood lost in recompense. At least not hers. The prospect of leaving Goodneighbor intact was appearing more of a reality by the minute. If she wasn’t going to be executed for the not-really-attempted robbery, it was possible she’d be free to walk. Daring to know one way or the other, Nora spoke up.

“Mayor.”

“Hancock,” the ghoul sighed, turning his eyes from the doorway back to the woman in the vault suit. He appeared roused back to the matter at hand. “You wanna know where you stand with Goodneighbor, yeah?”

“MacCready and Bobbi as well.”

Hancock snorted from the hollow in his face. “You really concerned about No-Nose? After she set you up to do her dirty work and left ya hanging out to dry?” Nora’s resolute gaze was the ghoul’s silent answer. The mayor gave a soft huff. “Look, if you’re worried about another incident like Finn happening, then don’t. Bobbi… she can leave, if that’s what she wants. I know she’s got another little holdout in Southie. If she’s gonna go, then that’s where she’s goin’. Ain’t no love loss. As far as you and MacCready are concerned, you were just pawns in her game. Nothin’ personal, I got that. Trying to shoot me right now? You've had a rough day, I can appreciate that, and I won’t hold it to ya on one condition…”

One of Nora’s dark brows arched sharply. “One condition? And what would that be?”

The ghoul let out a sound, low and raspy and heavy with the weight of some kind of forthcoming admission. “Let me tell ya. This classy little tricorner hat of mine is getting heavy.”

 

* * *

 

In the end, Hancock wound up paying her. For what, he’d found an appropriate excuse. She'd talked down Bobbi from doing anything really fucking stupid, and possibly saved the lives of a few of his Neighborhood Watch in the process of avoiding a firefight. His strongroom might have been blown open, sure, but nothing had been snatched. It was still intact, more or less speaking. That deserved a reward was how he had passed it off. The girl had readily accepted the caps - as he knew she would - though naturally wary with the trait he'd grown swiftly familiar with from her. Kid was wound up tighter than those assholes in Diamond City. Maybe getting dumped out of some vault and landing in this heap of a wasteland was enough to do that to someone. He could sympathize, and so he made allowances for her. Not everyone could appreciate Goodneighbor, as not everyone could appreciate ghouls. Long ago he had learned to accept these things. Besides, the girl was new. Maybe she’d come around. 

KL-E-0 placed three boxes of shotgun shells over the cage armor, metal claw rotating back to her side, and lifted an emotionless face back to the ghoul.  If the assaultron could raise an expectant brow at him, Hancock was sure she would.

“Crowd control has its charm, but nothing kills with as much flair as a minigun, mayor,” the mechanical voice cooed. “If you are shopping for effective slaughter, why not decimate an entire crowd with one nuke. Nothing will save on ammunition like a fatman.”

Hancock’s lipless mouth grinned admiringly. “I always respected your no-nonsense approach, Kleo. But I was thinkin’ on something a little lighter for the road.”

“In that case, I have a great deal on missile launchers. And for you, I am capable of offering a mayoral discount. Buy two missiles, get a third free. While supplies last.”

“I appreciate that, but ya think you can offer the same for some of your rifle ammo? My friends over there,” and the ghoul inclined his tricorn towards Daisy’s store, “are more of the long range sort. Not too big on partystarters.”

“A fatal mistake out there,” the assaultron dismissed, unimpressed.

“I feel ya.”

Hancock rejoined the two riflemen in Daisy’s Discounts, tossing two packs of .308 ammo into MacCready’s surprised hands. The ex-gunner grinned, pulling off his worn travel bag to stuff the ammo away with a “Hey, thanks.” Daisy inclined her head lightly in the mayor’s direction and carried on with the banter keeping her and the new girl occupied. To the ghoul’s observation, it appeared that Daisy and Nora had made fast friends of one another. Both women were propped casually across the shop’s counter, holding close conversation. The fact that the shop owner was a ghoul didn’t seem to faze the vaultie at all. It was a refreshing change from the way they had met yesterday, down in the Third Rail. In retrospect, though, Hancock had to confess that the girl had readily signed up for work with Bobbi, who was also noticeably no longer human. The mayor had to grudgingly accept that perhaps Nora’s problem wasn’t necessary with all ghouls, that maybe it was just with him. After all, she had been far from thrilled when he'd given her the choice between having him along or paying for the damages to his strongroom. It was funny, the odd disappointment he felt at that possibility.

“So,” Hancock started, breaking his line of thought, “she tell you where we’re going?”

MacCready shouldered his sack of supplies and shrugged a bit. “Well, after she was done chewing me out for leading her on to believe I was taking off on her,” the merc shot the ghoul a look, “- and thanks for that, by the way, great plan - she mentioned some place called Sanctuary Hills. Or something like that. She said it was by an old Red Rocket truck stop, west of Concord.”

“Hey, I had no idea the girl was so damn twitchy,” Hancock dismissed. “So near Concord, huh?” The ghoul’s hairless brows rose a fraction. “Bit of a walk. She tell you what’s there?”

“Nope.”

“Doesn’t matter,” was the raspy reply. “Wanted to get out and sharpen the blade anyway. Plenty of ground between here and there to do that.”

“Sure will be. I’m going to try marking our route. See if she can add it to her pip-boy, since I doubt she’ll be able to avoid hot spots without it. Not sure she’s familiar with what’s where.”

“Cool. I’m going to put this classic little getup on a temporary hiatus then. Let’s be ready to move when I’m done.”

MacCready nodded absently and moved out of the shop. Hancock watched the rifleman shuffle to a bench, studying an old, crumpled map the mayor recognized as belonging to Daisy. Hancock waved discreetly to the ghoulette as he went for the back stairs, catching the shop keep’s attention from her steady conversation, first pointing to his newly acquired cage armor and then the ceiling. Daisy nodded, then proceeded to pull out some old books from below her counter, which Hancock could see Nora opening up to examine.

“Hates chems, loves books,” the ghoul mused as he climbed the small staircase to Daisy’s quarters. He snickered. “Whatta nerd.”

It did, however, play into the mayor’s favor that the girl had some enthusiasm for literature. Hancock was a literate ghoul, and had perused through his fair share of books in his time. Several of them had even been from Daisy’s own collection. It gave him an unexpected, but very welcome, topic of mutual interest. Something he could try and use as a figurative olive branch. He'd find some casual avenue for bringing the subject up on their trek. An icebreaker of sorts. The girl was shut up pretty tight, but he had a foot in the door now. Wouldn't take long to wriggle and charm his way into learning more about her. Figure her out.

The ghoul would be lying to say that he hadn't found himself uniquely interested in the reserved vault woman with the distant, blue eyes. A solitary thing. In Goodneighbor, you got all sorts blowing in and sliding out. Drifters and scavvers, guns-for-hire and gangsters, folks down on their luck and some looking to make ends meet at the misfortune of others. Some stayed for a while, some stayed to call the town home, others were gone before you knew they'd even arrived. Hancock had seen a lot of different faces come and go through his city gates, but he'd yet to see one quite like this dark-haired woman hiding a bright blue vault suit beneath some blood-stained old parka. “Different” was a good word to describe her, and yeah, it made him damn interested. It was the primary reason he'd selected her for his escape.

_ What's your story, sister? _

The mayor had only just begun removing his faithful frock coat when the sound of feet ascending the rickety staircase interrupted him. Hancock turned, and half a head of red hair popped up into view.

_ Shit _ .

When he'd made his intentions of leaving Goodneighbor known, he'd felt somewhat surprised at how complacent his bodyguard had appeared at his decision. He should have known better.

“So you're really doing this,” the woman’s familiar voice smoothly remarked. “You're bailing out on Goodneighbor. Ten years, John.”

“Hey,” Hancock soothed, slipping out from under the battered velvet and turning to face his friend. “I ain't bailing on anything. This is my town, no distance is gonna change that.”

Fahrenheit watched him drop the old frock coat to Daisy’s bedroll, unconvinced. “They’ll need more than a figurative mayor running their town from halfway across the Commonwealth, Hancock. You’ve already just had Bobbi running her game right under your nose. What’s going to happen when others realize you aren’t at home? Or ever coming back?”

“I ain’t leaving forever, Fahrenheit,” the ghoul intoned. “They already know what’s up, and besides,” Hancock tossed his hat to the bed, “I don’t even have a nose.”

“You might be able to fool most of them, but you haven’t fooled us all,” the bodyguard carried on, unimpressed with the mayor’s attempt at humor. “There I was, coming up from the Rail with two bottles of booze and you overhead, making some grand oration on how you were walking out. Next to me, I saw the nervous faces of people going along with your smooth delivery because they’ve always had nothing but faith in your promises. And then when I feel someone bump up alongside, it’s Daisy, and she’s not so easily taken. She asks me how long I’ve known you were planning to run, and what can I even say. So I tell her the truth, that I didn’t know anything about it.”

“I ain’t  _ running- _ ”

She cut him off. “Daisy knows you better than anyone else in Goodneighbor, and that is the word she used. She’s known you longest, Hancock. Before she had this shop, before this was a place she could even set up shop. After I answered her question, she tells me that she had a feeling it was coming. Thought that maybe, with this town and the responsibility, you may have kicked that old trait. But if you hadn’t, it was a long time coming.”

Hancock didn’t say anything for a stretch, wordlessly working at shedding the frilled shirt, yellowed and frayed with age and neglect. After a moment, Fahrenheit received “Well, Daisy always did know best. Never could argue that.”

It was quiet for a moment longer as the ghoul grabbed the cage armor, giving the gear a quick appraisal. The pants looked ridiculously oversized for his waistline, but Hancock figured he could simply keep the ones he was already accustomed to wearing. The frilled top landed over the red coat, and the mayor started working at leather fastens and metal buckles. Fahrenheit watched quietly as Hancock loosened up the scuffed plates, standing there in nothing but a dirty undershirt and his too-large pants and boots, looking small and somewhat lessened without the gaudy crimson or the large, three-point hat. He was so skinny, and Fahrenheit could imagine anyone outside their settlement walls mistaking him for a feral. She pictured the man having always been lean, becoming a ghoul only compounding that. There was something about the ghoulification process that seemed to burn a body down. Like meat left to roast, the fat and the excess was melted away into something smaller, hardier. It was the closest Fahrenheit could get to explaining what happened to a person after the radiation was done cooking them from the inside out. A peal of laughter from down below carried up the stairs, breaking up her channel of thought. Daisy and the vault girl.

“Just tell me this isn’t about chasing after some skirt.”

Hancock scoffed. “I know I’ve got a lot of sex appeal goin’ on here, but maybe you hadn’t noticed,” the ghoul disappeared for a second, inside the dishwater dull folds of the armor, and then his head popped back out, “I ain’t exactly her type.”

“So why now?”

“Daisy told you. Been a long time coming.”

“Why  _ now _ ? With everything that’s going on…”

The ghoul’s stringy arms snaked through the garment’s empty sleeves. “Everything?”

“You know as well as I do that the warehouses are infested. Someone’s running an operation, and they aren’t on our side.”

“So give Chuck some caps and tell him I’m hiring an exterminator for the rats. Keep it on the low, but get it done.”

“What about the guns in the alleys? Shifty pricks, can’t get in on who they’re working for without them scattering like radroaches or getting wild. They could be related problems.”

“Yeah, well, it’s Goodneighbor. We’ve always had the colorful sorts with a penchant for pulling on a trigger over caps or chems or some such shit. Just remind the folks to keep away from the back streets and there shouldn’t be trouble.”

“None of this brings a particular name to mind?”

Hancock extricated his gnarled hands and began the process of fastening the gear to his frame. “Don’t think I haven’t thought it. But it ain’t like we can do anything about that. Bastard’s dug in too deep at this point.” Fahrenheit pulled a face and went to argue that sentiment, but the mayor was quicker, and eager to end this conversation entirely. Spreading out his arms, the ghoul contrived the most charming grin he had in his arsenal.The absolute shit-eater. “Hey! This is Goodneighbor we’re talkin’ about. The place was designed to run on its own steam. Everything is gonna be fine. Now help your mayor strap up.”

The two remained in place, as if this would be their scene for the remainder of time. Fahrenheit watching Hancock, and the mayor watching his guard. There was a lot said in the span of their silence, where no words were needed. Then, just as swiftly as it had come about, it ended. The rough woman yielded to the dauntless countenance with an exasperated sigh - and as simple as that, Hancock won. The redhead with the facial burn made her way from the stairs, further into Daisy’s room, and motioned for the ghoul to turn around. Hancock complied, and Fahrenheit got to work strapping up the armor.

“This is ridiculous,” the woman huffed as she tightened a belt. “Who  _ pays  _ someone so they can be their bodyguard?”

“I never said I was going to be her bodyguard.”

The woman was silent for a second as she hitched another strap tighter. “Hancock… you’re a fool.”

  
  


Downstairs, Daisy had a pack ready for the mayor. Some canned goods, his shotgun and ammunition, bits and bobs for the road, and a sleeping roll strapped to the top. When he tried to pay her, the shop keep refused. Instead, she asked something in return.

“You take care of yourself, John, and come back.”  _ So much use of the first name today _ . “And you mind that girl. She’s got a lot of determination,” Daisy spoke with a smile, “but I don’t think she has any idea of what’s waiting for her out there.”

Outside, Nora and MacCready were patiently waiting by the little half-wall, bags of their own stuffed and strapped over their backs. When Hancock joined them, Nora pulled up her pip-boy to show the ghoul the object of their destination. Sure enough, northwest of Concord was a little green marker labeled “Sanctuary Hills,” as MacCready had aforementioned. When the girl pressed down on a button, a little green line mapped out the route the mercenary had picked. It was the most direct trail while avoiding locations Hancock was happy to bypass. Handy little tool, even if it did look somewhat cumbersome anchored to the vaultie’s narrow forearm. The ghoul had no way of knowing that the device had fit a lot more snug before Nora had left the vault she’d found it in.

The trio started for the front gate, Nora waving over her shoulder towards Daisy’s. Hancock couldn’t resist a knock at the girl’s obvious warmth towards the ghoulette. Nora played the observation off easily enough, commenting that Daisy was the only good neighbor she’d so far met in  _ Good _ neighbor, and that she’d not miss putting the place behind her. Something about shady junkies and the feeling that she’d been constantly under watch nearly the entire time she’d been in the settlement. For a place like Hancock’s town, where it was a habit for folks to mind their own, it was a funny remark. The mayor spared a look over his shoulder as they pushed out the entranceway, but all he saw was just another drifter observing their passing from outside KL-E-0’s shop. Catching Hancock’s gaze, the man spread a friendly smile from beneath a pair of dark lenses and waved. A second after, he was pushing off the shop wall and ambling his way towards Scollay Square. Hancock shut the door behind them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait. New semester is going to be a killer.  
> <3 Thank you so much for the continued love.


	6. Crack of Doom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're reading this, know that the story lives. It failed to die. Maybe it should have, but it hasn't.

The bobby pin broke and Nora swore lowly, glaring down at the obstinate bit of ruined trash in her hand. Beside her, MacCready chuckled. It was a smooth sound, rolling out of the younger companion easily. The rifleman was seated on the shop floor, back propped up against the wall with the safe. He was chewing idly on some iguana Nora had taken one look at and turned down. The vault woman had been surprised to discover that the mercenary had a very pleasant sounding laugh. She hadn’t expected that from a contract killer. She'd been even more amused to discover that the merc also had a library’s worth of jokes, puns, and wisecracks at his disposal - all of which he seemingly found laugh worthy. It was an unexpected but welcomed discovery.

Early into his employment, Nora had found appreciation for the younger man's ability to find mirth in the grim face of this brutal world. She certainly couldn’t find the same strength of character to laugh so freely - and MacCready’s habit of finding humor anywhere, whether conscious or simply a nervous tick, was a welcome respite from the tight tension coiled along Nora’s shoulders as the trio picked their way through Boston’s ruins. Even listening to a joke about a rock hitting a super mutant was a break from the nerve-rattling strain of expecting an attack around every corner.

The woman turned her gaze from the stubborn wall-safe down to the merc’s hatted head. All she could see of the man’s face being a long, narrow nose angled below the cap’s peak.

“Do you have anymore pins?”

MacCready passed what remained of the iguana to his left hand and began digging around in his right breast pocket. After a second of searching, the sniper offered a new bobby pin to the girl.

“You should try relaxing a bit, while we have the opportunity.”

Nora plucked the pin and again set to work on the lock. “I prefer to keep busy.” It keeps my thoughts from...

“Okay,” the rifleman chuckled, taking another nibble from the grilled lizard. “But maybe try nudging it a little softer. Barely any pressure at all. You'll feel the give when you hit it.”

Nora paused to consider the mercenary’s advice, then lightened her determined hold over her red screwdriver. Barely any pressure, she silently recited, and gently coaxed at the tool.

She’d picked the thing up out of an old toolbox in Diamond City, after Nick had told her about how people could open locked doors with the things. It was a curious decision for her to have made, something the old Nora would have been scandalized to consider - learning the traits of a common thief, breaking and entering. The Nora now found a growing interest in the trade, her old world sense of propriety suddenly finding itself left two hundred years in the past with every new skill for survival needed.

For Nora, picking locks had lost its feeling of taboo almost overnight. After struggling in a world where escaping through a locked door could mean life or death - and she thought briefly of a detective trapped inside a vault - or rescuing a friend in need, it was easy to discard any previous hesitations about the trade. The trick, she had quickly discovered, was learning how to master the craft. Nick hadn’t been able to show her very much about the art, but MacCready was becoming a true resource for learning the skill.

Nora felt the bobby pin snag beneath her fingers and she immediately let off pressure. She spun the tiny instrument in the opposite direction and tried again, determined.

And there it was - Determination.

In a life lived by the choices of others, it was one aspect of herself that Nora had always been proud of. Her inability to be dissuaded. It was her staunchest ally and the key to any of her greatest successes. It was a trait she had recognized in herself as early as childhood. A small child always readily picked for a project not because of her ability to present the assignment, but for her eagerness to see the task accomplished - even if she was often the one who ended up staying up late the night before the presentation with last-minute tasks. It was her natural tenacity that had proved the most sustaining to her endeavors as a young woman. She certainly never would have found success in pursuing a legal diploma without it. Her simple but dauntless determination to succeed had spared her from the looks of men, of fellow peers, who laughed openly about a woman pursuing the Legal bar at University instead of a butter bar in the kitchen.

When she put her mind to a mission, she was the most dependable force. It was her greatest self-pride. Her father would often smile at its mention, shake his head, and make some comment of his daughter being akin to a dog with a bone. Nate had simply called it “Nora being stubborn.”

“Relentless, aren'tcha, Riley-girl?”

Her grip slipped. The pin strained and threatened to snap.

Nora stopped and frowned across at the lock. She took a breath and forced her mind to other topics. She considered around for a moment before she settled on a new and comforting one: Valentine. The screwdriver started delicately twisting again.

Nick had been a wonder at hacking through terminals. Put the detective in front of any computer and he'd find a way past security like some kind of mechanical wizard. It was a real talent and Nora was endlessly impressed with his skill. Watching those replicated hands fly over the keyboard, it was something she had wanted him to teach her. In her mind she had told herself, “After Kellog. After I have my boy, I'll ask him about it.” Only the opportunity had never come, and thinking on metal faces and neon yellow eyes only gave the woman a peculiar sense of loneliness. A thought then occurred to her.

“We should stop by Diamond City on our way out. I have a friend there, he showed me some good streets between it and Goodneighbor. I bet I can follow them back well enough. I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. Might be safer, and I would very much like to introduce you. I think he would appreciate it.”

MacCready spoke around a mouthful of lizard. “Doesn't matter. We can't go inside anyway. Not with Hancock.”

The smile that had been tugging the corners of Nora’s mouth at the thought of seeing Nick and Ellie again swiftly faded. She would have turned questioning eyes towards the mercenary, but at that same moment her surprise was arrested by the safe as she felt the lock slide. She felt the sudden give. The screwdriver began to rotate in the absence of resistance.

“What do you mean, ‘not with Hancock’?”

From her peripherals, Nora could see the ex-gunner’s hat shift as his gaze turned to regard her. Somewhere at her hip, at her side, the merc’s blue eyes were looking up, scrutinizing her. Then his surprised remark, “The ghouls. He's a ghoul.” A pause. “Don't you know what they did to the ghouls in Diamond City?”

There was a span of silence as Nora felt her teeth gnaw at the inside of her lip. For half a second Nora wanted to turn and tell the merc that no, she didn't know. She didn't know much of anything about anything in this new, old world. She was still struggling daily just to come to terms with this all being real, that this had all somehow become her terrible reality. She wanted to find the words to let the former gunner know that she had fallen into this nightmare like a house crashing down from the sky. A victim of a disaster which had left her stranded, trying to pick up the pieces in a daze. But she didn’t. The peace was held in the break of conversation, and at that exact moment there came the victorious click of the lock snapping open. Both pairs of eyes were now marveling at the safe.

“Hey, nice,” MacCready mumbled, tossing away the skeletal leftovers of his snack and pushing to his feet. He joined the woman at the compact coffer. “What's in it?”

The tiny metal door was pulled open and then the tell-tale skitter of clawed feet had Nora wheeling around to face whatever was scampering into the blown-down shop. From the collapsed side of the gutted building, the familiar tawny shag of Dogmeat’s hairy head came into focus. Nora nearly gasped with relief. She’d left her rifle propped several feet away against a crumbling counter. It was almost laughable how she’d already changed so much - from a woman who had loathed hunting trips to a woman who panicked without the weight of a weapon in her grip. If you could only see me, Nate... She immediately felt her pulse slowing, thoughts of wild mongrels and feral ghouls fading alongside the spike of fear. Dogmeat pranced over to her side and dropped a shabby box of Salisbury at her feet, oblivious to the fright he’d nearly given her. The dog sat down upon expectant haunches, tilting a look up at his new master. Nora scooped up the slightly gnawed package and ran a hand over the dog's perky ears.

“For me? Good boy.”

Dogmeat barked.

Were all canines this capable, Nora wondered, or had this dog once been taught these tricks? Whichever it was, the woman was honestly amazed. She had never owned a dog before. It had just never seemed that important. In her youth, her father had been allergic to animals. As a young woman, she had held other interests. She'd been ferried away for years with her education, and then she'd met Nate. After their engagement Nate had suggested getting “properly domesticated” with a pet. He’d even gone so far as to leave a dog bowl out as a reminder of this family goal. They had waited, though. Nora had insisted that they hold off until after the baby. And then…

“That swarm of ferals has moved off.” Hancock’s rasping voice heralded the ghoul’s return. “Best opportunity as we'll ever get to pass without makin’ trouble.”

“Sounds good,” MacCready replied easily.

The Goodneighbor mayor stepped his way around chairs long ago knocked askew and left to rust across the floor. He padded over rotten and sodden paper threatening to stick to his historic footwear. As Nora momentarily regarded her newest addition, strapped within cage armor and tricorner hat, shotgun in hand, said ghoul shifted to return her gaze with a cock of his ribbed neck. It was curious, the tiny, facsimile traits that Hancock had which reminded Nora of his more savage brethren. She'd already begun to notice the tiny details as they’d started along their travels through old Boston. Most notable were the fractional shifts of his head, nearly avian in manner, and the subtle sniffings that had taken her a while to realize were coming from him. Tiny behaviors that only served to compliment the ghoul’s features in reminding the world that he was no longer human. And almost as if knowing her thoughts, the mayor's lipless mouth pulled into a long grin.

“You’re lookin’ a bit on edge.”

Something metallic sailed across the distance and Nora caught a tin of what she swiftly identified to be mentats. She'd once had two peers in her graduating class expelled over gossip about severe mentats abuse. Some scandal about cheating at exams.

Like a game of hot potato, the tin was just as swiftly riding an arch back to the ghoul. Dogmeat’s curious gaze rotated after it. Hancock deftly snatched the chems at arm’s length, even with his thick gloves. He didn't appear disappointed by Nora’s swift rejection. More likely than not, the mayor had been expecting that very reaction.

“I'm fine,” Nora replied easily. “Just thought you were a raider for a moment, is all.”

The ghoul’s grin broadened into something shit-eating. “I'd put on the red again but that didn't seem to help much before. Guess we’re just lucky you didn't have a gun in hand this time.”

Nora’s lips pursed at the mention of the incident in Goodneighbor and MacCready quickly muffled a laugh from beside her. The merc made for their gear, tossing two boxes of ammo at Nora as he went. Dogmeat bounced lightly, probably hoping someone would finally throw something for him to catch this time. It was like everyone had suddenly started playing at games and Nora was the only one standing around, clueless a game had even begun.

“That was in the safe. No gun though.” MacCready lazily indicated towards the ammunition. Then with mock gravity, “but you crack it, you keep it. That's the law.”

Nora had managed to catch both packs in her arms, spare herself from looking more the idiot. She stared down at the twin cartons, reading the faded 10mm printed across the packaging. “These, uh… I don't think these are going to work out for my rifle...”

“They're not,” MacCready acknowledged as he snatched up his bag from amongst the rubbish littering the floor, smoothly tossing it over a shoulder. He shot Nora a look. “But you can always trade them with a merchant for what you need. Unless, of course, you’d rather me hang onto those valuables for you?”

Hancock shouldered his double-barrel, watching the girl tuck the ammo into her belongings with a “That’s all right.” The mayor likewise tucked away the mentats tin into a back pouch with his free hand, finding that the nooks and crannies of the cage armor were working out pretty well. He shot the merc an amused look.

“Cracking safes? You teachin’ her bad habits already, MacCready?”

Travel pack strapped on, the ex-gunner spread his arms apart. “Hey... they're not as bad as yours, though.”

Nora felt significantly the odd man out as she mutely watched both men break into companionable laughter over the crack. Not for the first time did the vaultie feel a sudden and uneasy wave of doubt rise up over the wisdom in having placed her trust in people she hardly knew. But, she conceded privately, what other option did she have right now? The truth was that she'd gamble whatever she had to if it meant getting one step nearer to Shaun.

* * *

The first the party became aware of the distress signal was the soft click from the pip-boy. Nora’s immediate thought was that they’d wandered into a radiation pocket, but the vault-tec equipment had been content to emit just one solitary blip and a glowing notification that a new broadcast was within range. Curious, she’d pulled up the menu for radio signals. A voice, cultivated and desperate, came through requesting immediate help. The trio and the dog had pulled alongside a boarded over business front, pausing beneath its wilted awning to listen to the distress call loop two more times before Nora finally switched it off.

“Trinity Tower?”

Hancock’s pock-marked chin inclined somewhere over Nora’s shoulder, indicating south, and the woman turned blue eyes to follow his direction. “That white, rusted-out behemoth. You see it? Tallest building in all of Boston.”

Sure enough, over the tangle of broken buildings, Nora could observe the pillar of pre-war infrastructure climbing skyward above Boston’s drab ruins. Compared to the rest of the mangled city, Trinity Tower was monolithic in stature. She squinted through the sun, out across to the structure, and wondered what kind of trouble the sophisticated voice had come across. She didn’t need to get creative, it was very possible the person was simply stuck inside. A highrise that massive, it was hard to imagine the ancient architecture had made it through a war and two centuries without sustaining some structural damage. A person could easily get trapped simply attempting to maneuver around unsafe floors and ceilings, Nora reasoned. But the mercenary turned her thoughts into wishful thinking a second later.

“Trinity Tower… I’m familiar with it,” MacCready offered up carefully, “Never tried going inside, myself. Gunner reports would say the place was crawling with super mutants. Not exactly a good local for prying around. Not if you want to come back out alive, that is.”

Nora’s brows knitted together. “It’s full of super mutants?”

Hancock was quick to speak up. “What? A few green-skins and it’s too much to take a quick look? Guys are big but they’re dumb as bricks. We’ve held ‘em off from Goodneighbor plenty of times.” The ghoul waved a bolstering, gloved hand towards the mercenary. “You used to be a gunner, I’ve seen gunners take on mutants in the streets. We can handle ‘em. At least long enough to find out what’s goin’ on with the mayday.”

“Yeah, well I’m not with the gunners anymore,” was the younger man’s moody reply, “and they only fought mutants when properly equipped in numbers. Besides, Hancock,” the sniper persisted, “the man’s probably long dead.”

“Well let’s be sure.”

“Not so fast.”

Both Hancock and Nora paused at the shift in tone. It was sharp, sharper than MacCready’s previous warning. The merc’s tone was changing, growing more defiant. Nora could hear the cautious advisory changing chords into something nearing contention. MacCready could whine, by now, after working the job for Bobbi, Nora knew that. But the young man could also be huffy and resentful.

“You’re asking for a big risk for a fifty-fifty that the person who sent out that signal is still alive and not hanging in some meat sack. There’s no way of telling how long ago that broadcast was even made. It could have been repeating itself for days. Hell, weeks, even.”

For his part, the slum-town mayor appeared unfazed by the merc’s argument. If anything, Hancock appeared nothing if not amused by MacCready’s growing apprehension. Gripping his sawed-off nonchalantly across slouched shoulders, the ghoul listened to the merc’s reservations with an upward curve to his mouth. A man accustomed to having his way, Nora thought. The way he smiled at Finn on the street. The way he smiled at me in the statehouse.

“Doesn’t change anything,” Hancock replied easily enough. “Even if that’s the case and that broadcast’s been stuck on loop, someone’s gotta turn it off. Can’t have good samaritans wanderin’ into a trap, just try’na lend a hand.”

There was a beat of silence. Then the sniper’s exasperated, “Hancock, we would be the good samaritans walking into the trap.”

“C’mon, MacCready,” the mayor cajoled, his smile gone reassuring below his tricorned hat. “Don’t go losin’ your fight on us yet. It’ll only take an hour. In real quick, see what’s up, and right back out. Just a peek. The muties won’t even know we were there.”

Below the peak of his own hat, the gunman’s goateed face looked beautifully unconvinced. “Maybe on someone else’s time.”

“Hey, Vaultie.”

Nora felt her pulse jump. She knew exactly what was happening next. They were going to place the weight of the decision over her shoulders. Nora the tie-breaker. Both men were now watching her intently, MacCready looking sulky and Hancock ever brazen. Even Dogmeat had seemed to pause, warm canine eyes earnestly watching his new master, as if to see what she would decide.

“This is technically on your time, ain’t it?” Hancock asked, like he didn’t already know. “So what do ya say? Leave that poor guy up there to his fate, or give the man a hand?”

“I can’t believe this,” the sniper muttered lowly, “risking our lives over some stranger.”

“Hey,” the ghoul warned, “that doesn’t matter. Someone needs helping, we help ‘em. You’d hope for so much if you were the guy up there.” MacCready’s eyes shifted away, hands clenching tightly at his rifle. Hancock’s dark gaze swiveled back to intently study Nora. “So, sister, whatcha say?”

What could she say? Nora silently considered her options. She was vaguely familiar with super mutants at a distance. She’d done her utmost to avoid the brutes during her careful travels through the wreckage of Boston. They looked severely dangerous and utterly menacing. If common sense wasn’t enough to encourage avoiding contact with them, Nick Valentine’s warnings had fostered her understanding that never getting near the beasts would be preferable. She was content to continue slipping past their notice whenever their paths unfortunately crossed. Content to continue doing her best to ignore their monstrous presence in this twisted new world. But would she be able to so easily ignore the guilt of dismissing the distress signal? Would she feel as content slipping past a plea for help?

It was a simple thing to walk away from this situation, and she understood MacCready’s reluctance to do differently, but would it prove to be as simple a thing to brush away the feeling in her gut over the decision to leave? Would it be simple a day from now? A week from now? The man over the radio had sounded so… what was it that struck her most about his voice? That it was articulate? It took Nora a minute to decipher it, but she realized that what had caught her attention was how civilized this Rex Goodman had sounded. It was like a faint light from across a long span of deep water; it gave her a pale glimmer of the old world.

If the unease of turning her back on someone needing help wasn’t enough to sway her to the ghoul’s side, her utter curiosity over this enigmatic man requesting assistance certainly did. Besides, didn’t Hancock say just an hour of their time? In real quick and right back out? Nora wondered whether she actually believed that or whether the ghoul’s easy way of handling people had her buying into it. To Nora’s observations, Hancock had thus far proved himself quite capable of getting his way in as many words as he needed to charm a situation into his favor. That and a readily available combat knife, she reminded herself. That also seemed to help manipulate a situation. From the back of her mind, Nora could recall a resentful voice rasping, “Everyone is so damn afraid of him or so damn in love with him.”

“Okay,” she agreed at length, surprised by her willingness to take up some cause just a week ago she’d never have had the courage to attempt, “he’s right. It’s the right thing to do. We’ll check it out, but quick and quiet.”

The ghoul’s blatant grin and the mercenary’s sullen frown told Nora that both men had somehow already been aware of what her decision would be. The woman wondered if her actions and choices were really so transparent, or whether the small group was already beginning to figure itself out in their short time together.

 

They turned their travel south into Trinity Plaza, the great pillar their looming marker. Arriving at the base of the tower, Nora could properly marvel at how truly outstanding the building’s prominence was in comparison to the ruins of old Boston. Such a massive fortification, she could understand why the super mutants had chosen the location to construct a bastion. Their brutish touch was evident all around the tower. Cruel spikes of rusted metal jutted out in clumps around the structure. The smell of rotting meat, sour and sickly sweet, hung like a perfume over the entire block. It permeated everywhere around the building’s vicinity, providing the most obvious warning of the danger inside the highrise. Then there was that particular level of babble Nora had come to recognize, deep and resonating. She used it to mark how many of the mutants were occupying the ground level. To her gratefulness, she could only make out two distinct voices.

The party silently crept up alongside the outer wall, MacCready bringing them to pause against the side of some sandbag mound. Had the mutants stacked the bags up, or had they been sitting there since the war? It was a silly thought, but Nora found it a distracting relief from the reality of what they were doing. Her hands were going clammy from nerves. The two voices were unnaturally heavy, reminding the woman of the size difference between a human and a super mutant. The ex-gunner shifted to peek over the top of their cover. Behind her, Nora felt her pack jostle as Hancock moved to do the same. She kept her position, happy to allow her mind to continue wandering.

Huddled beneath the shade of the monster structure, her mind cast backwards in time, recalling books likely lost long ago in the war. Her thoughts turned fittingly to the story of Babel: mankind’s ever consuming desire to claim its own godlike status on Earth. The famed tower had ultimately degenerated into a regression of the progress it had been striving to make. “History repeats itself” was an old saying brought sharply to mind. Nora could certainly appreciate why the phrase had never fallen out of circulation. Perhaps her world had been its own form of Babel. Society thinking itself tiny gods capable of bending nuclear power to their every whim. For that progress, the world’s reversion came at the hands of nuclear destruction. What survived after war was a twisted ruin littered with radioactive terrors. War makes monsters of men. Was that irony or poetic justice?

“It’s a tragedy,” Nora breathed out softly in answer to her own thoughts.

“Hey,” MacCready whispered, assuming the quiet admission was in regards to the situation at hand, “you’re the one that voted we come out here.”

The mercenary dropped back down beside her and Nora was able to clearly see that the man had still not forgiven her for siding with Hancock. It wasn’t a resentful sort of grudge, but it was the sort of chip over the shoulder that told her if things went south, MacCready would know exactly who to hold responsible for it. She thought about telling the merc that she hadn’t been referring to the mutants, but Dogmeat’s sudden snarling, and Hancock dropping back down alongside them, stole the opportunity away.

“Looks like this is our only ticket in,” the ghoul muttered. “Figure we can make some kinda distraction. Get those freaks to clear out from the lobby far enough for us to slip through to the stairs.”

“I can always camp up on another highrise,” MacCready offered easily. “Take some potshots to get their attention. You two can sneak past while they’re occupied.”

Nora watched the merc talk. He really doesn’t want to do this. Faced with the impending actuality of carrying out their earlier bravado, a growing sense of dread began to blossom in the pit of her gut. The woman found herself second guessing her decision to attempt a rescue mission. Maybe it was a mistake… maybe we’re in over our heads…

The heavy weight of patrolling feet approaching their position raised the hairs on the back of the woman’s arms. She clutched nervously to the stock of her rifle. Dogmeat was bristling from neck to tail. She’d reach out to reassure the animal, but she didn’t trust her hands not to jitter. Maybe it wasn’t too late to call it off? MacCready’s steadfast reluctance was beginning to overshadow Hancock’s unwavering confidence as the new voice of reason. She licked dry lips and turned to lean in closer to whisper at the ghoul.

“Hold up.”

Hancock had been pulling open a new pack of shells and stuffing the cartridges into a battered pocket. His ebony gaze shifted up from the cage armor to regard her curiously. He had a very open way of carrying his expressions, Nora realized. For lacking brows or obvious definition within the eyes, he had a very honest demeanor. Nora was surprising herself by discovering how easily she was learning to read her not-quite-human traveling companion.

A hairless, pock-marked brow arched upwards. “Yeah?”

Nora licked her lips once more, scrambling for a way to say “maybe MacCready’s right” without the ghoul thinking her a coward. A way for her to say it without thinking herself a coward. It was Dogmeat’s sudden intervention that saved her from prolonging the awkward indecision. So preoccupied with finding the right words, Nora hadn’t been aware of the heavy snuffling growing increasingly louder the closer the weighty, reverberating steps grew. Her dog, however, was very much aware. She should have been paying attention. She should have been minding her animal. With a vicious snarl, Dogmeat broke from their cover, barking and charging around to the building’s entrance.

“Shit-er-damnit!” MacCready yelped.

Nora reached out, “Dogmeat!” but it was a hopeless endeavor. The canine was far from reach by the time any of them could react. Like it was the signal he had been waiting for, Hancock sprung to his feet, cocking his shotgun.

“Now it gets fun!”

At this point, Nora would have liked to say that combat was becoming an ordinary affair, commonplace in the daily activities of her new life, but she could not. As she watched the ghoul break from their cover to the sound of some sonorous trumpeting and a guttural shout of surprise, she felt cold fear flush the blood from her veins. Adrenaline, an icy bath for the nerves, washed over her. Fight or flight instinct, she distantly acknowledged. A hand brushed her shoulder, startling Nora from her stupor. It was MacCready. The former gunner was rising to his feet, following after Hancock’s brash offense. Startled into action, the woman had no choice but to scramble after her company.

Rising up to her feet, Nora got a good look at Hancock and Dogmeat skidding out of the line of automatic fire cutting vicious holes into the floor and walls of the main lobby. The ghoul shot off return fire and went sliding behind a support pillar to reload, bullets angrily riddling his cover in seconds. Dogmeat, clever creature that he was, had latched onto the back tatters of the second mutant’s ragged clothing. Enraged but unable to snag the snarling canine, the mutant was left flailing around in failure to strike at the dauntless dog with its crude nail board weapon.

With their cover completely blown, MacCready leveled his rifle and began firing off in rapid succession. Fire. Break. Fire. Break. Fire. Break. For all his offensive start, Nora couldn't see a single bullet hitting either mutant. It took the vault woman a moment to realize the mercenary’s target was actually the source of the siren. There was some massive beast, all teeth and maw from what Nora could discern, baying in the middle of the fray. With the mercenary’s sudden assault, the sonorous bellowing was abruptly ended. The monster, what looked like some version of a dog freed from the illustrations of Dante’s Inferno, yelped loudly as each shot fired lodged into its green bulk. For just as green and horrible in appearance as its lumbering masters, so was this new abomination. With one final shot, the sniper put a well-aimed bullet through one small, beady eye and straight through the creature's skull. The beast barked sharply, convulsed, and then keeled over.

“You're messing with the best!” Was the merc’s triumphant shout. MacCready sent Nora a quick look before taking off for another vantage point. “You can start shooting any time now!”

That's right. She had a gun. In this world, she was expected to pull her own weight, same as any man.

The ex-gunner was starting up a steady hail of fire on the mutant Dogmeat was still latched onto, so Nora sidled up against the entranceway, bringing her game towards the heavy sound of gunfire. A rapid hail of bullets, the pause to reload, and in that break the explosive blam-blam of Hancock’s double shot. She peered around the wall. The mayor was still crouched behind the lobby’s counter, snarling out insults and threats towards the mutant as he reloaded his sawed off. Trying to make its approach towards the ghoul’s location, Nora could see the mutant advancing each time it went on the offensive. There was blood already oozing down from patches of exposed green skin, dribbling from buckshot that had hit past the crude-looking armor.

Maybe it was true, Nora began to concur, that these monsters were rather clumsy and dim-witted. Maybe she had overestimated the threat. Hancock’s bravado from before came back to the forefront of her thoughts. Maybe they could do this after all. There was no denying the mutants were not to be taken lightly, but the trio - even Dogmeat - was still holding its own. It was the first wave of security that Nora had felt since the day she had sat down in Nick Valentine’s detective agency. The first feeling of safety with a stranger from a strange world. Her previous doubts about hiring the merc, and allowing the mayor to tag along, began to melt away like wax before a flame. Maybe things were going to be all right after all. So long as they kept the mutants at a safe distance, that was.

Speaking of which.

“That all you got?” The ghoul was shouting as another volley of automatic assault tore into the countertop, barely missing the tricorn as Hancock dropped back below cover.

The mutant was about five paces away and looking elated at the prospect of finally getting its massive hands around the narrow, insulting ghoul. Nora raised her rifle and squinted through the scope. She thought about a forest. A lone stag wandering through a barren, winter thicket. She could see the mutant’s neck exposed above the welded chestplate. Was that a refrigerator door? The mottled, thick skin was bobbing as the monster bellowed another challenge towards its hatted foe. Somewhere to the side, Nora could hear MacCready hooting, “That's how we get things done!” She didn't turn to look. She thought about a forest. Nate’s steady presence beside her. She pulled the trigger.

Blood exploded from the side of the mutant’s throat. The beast staggered. To the credit of his fearless persona, Hancock was jumping to his feet and springing over the countertop within a second of Nora’s shot. He was right up in front of the unsteady mutant when he fired off the last round. She heard the shotgun blast, but the ghoul’s retaliation was more a visual experience. The mutant’s face exploded into a blossoming orchid of arterial spray and shredded tissue. The massive weight of the monster thundered to the ground and Hancock was instantly beside Nora, giving an enthusiastic pat to the woman’s back, words of aplomb for her marksmanship eagerly dispensed for her benefit. MacCready and Dogmeat rejoined the pair, the tattered shreds of the other super mutant’s dismal wardrobe still proudly clutched between the canine’s jaws, when a static cry went up from above their heads.

“Ha! More humans come to rescue Rex! They are weak! Kill them!”

Hancock was flashing a toothy I-told-you-so over Nora’s head towards the mercenary, “Still alive!” and then the ghoul was latching onto the vault survivor’s arm to haul her swiftly up the wide stairway leading upwards. “C’mon, sister. Before they get the drop on us.”

There was nothing on the level above but more of the same from below. Filth. Trash. Bags that oozed blood and fluids that Nora didn’t want to consider and tried her best to hold her breath against. The team of four found only a single working elevator. They’d decided it best to leave Dogmeat on the ground floor. With Nora instructing the animal to wait for them and Hancock leading the way, the trio piled themselves into the small conveyor and felt the worn jerk of the machinery as it ascended.

“What if there’s more than just two mutants up here?” Nora breathed belatedly, feeling the rush of her pulse hammering beneath her ribcage and coursing through her wrists. Pressed snugly up against the two men crushed on either side of her, the woman was certain she could plainly distinguish their own racing adrenaline. She could certainly distinguish the sweat and smell of their traveling… and the lack of washing their clothes had endured.

“I’m sure there’s plenty more where that came from,” MacCready grumbled, and Nora felt another wild tremor race through her veins.

“Same as downstairs, just cut through them. The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” Hancock reassured. There was a pause and then the ghoul began swiftly rifling through his armor’s pockets. “I’ve got Med-X around here somewhere if anyone needs a fix.”

Nora watched as the ghoul’s gloved hands produced a rusty tin that she identified as some prewar pencil case, probably having belonged to a now long-dead child. The mayor flipped the top open and inside, instead of pencils and erasers, there were four little syringes neatly laid out. Beside her, the woman felt MacCready shrug.

“Sure. Better safe than sorry.”

She watched the ex-gunner take one and felt, more than observed, Hancock wait on her reply. She merely shook her head and looked away as she heard two syringes compress and then the metallic ring of the elevator as it jumped to a stop, doors sliding open. This time it was MacCready who led them forward. “Don’t let them catch us in a box,” the mercenary warned as he crouched low and scuttled swiftly across the empty reception room they emerged into, “it’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel.” Hancock and Nora were quick to follow after the trailing ends of his battered coat. Overhead, the momentary silence was cut short by another bark from an unseen speaker system.

“You only kill the weakest of us. It only makes us stronger.”

“Not this again,” the ex-gunner groaned irritably.

“If they cannot kill some puny humans, they are less than nothing.”

From beneath the brim of his broad hat, Hancock was giving the ceiling above a critical look. “Dunno about you, but I’m starting to feel like sticking the barrel of my gun in that mutie’s mouth will feel even better than getting this Rex guy outta here.”

“You fight well for a human,” the bodiless voice acknowledged, “Now die like one. My warriors are waiting for you.”

“This way,” MacCready whispered, inclining his head towards the back of the desk. Hancock and Nora followed his lead, three heads intensely peering out from behind the rusted, metal ledge and the lone terminal rested atop. Nora felt nearly giddy with one part fear and one part suspense. She noted the silent radio sitting forlorn at the far edge of the counter and for a split second entertained the erratic thought of turning it on and seeing what was playing.

Nerves. Nerves were a hell of a thing.

Immediately the muffled pounding of absurdly heavy feet began to draw within hearing range. There was a snort-snuffling sound, and from an open doorway directly across from their position, Nora watched in equal measures fear and suspense as an armed mutant came investigating the reception room, monstrous canine huffing in for any scent of the intruders. The pair were rounding the corner when the gun-for-hire shifted and Nora heard the faint click.

“Here we go.”

MacCready lobbed a fist-sized shell in the super mutant’s direction. There was only one deep cry of surprise before the grenade exploded. The mutant’s legs were torn apart and half the hound’s beastly head was ripped away from shrapnel. Instantly the cries of alarm went up. Nora could hear weighted footfalls pounding across the tower’s floors. The ex-gunner was handing off two grenades to Hancock, and just as the vault woman watched a second super mutant come charging through the doorway, pausing to swap its nailboard for the semiautomatic of its dead kin, another grenade went sailing overhead to land at the mutant’s surprised feet.

Hancock’s holler of “Boom!” accompanied the second detonation. The mutant stumbled backwards, screaming about its eyes, when a third was immediately pushing beyond his blinded counterpart and the settling cloud of smoke and dust. Nora felt someone pat her arm and she had only enough time to catch the ghoul’s fleeting advisory of “We got company, eyes up!” before the gunfire started all over again. This time around the woman was not as slow to fall to action.

The super mutant’s assault was quick and merciless. Bullets exploded from the muzzle of the monster’s pipe pistol, shredding the terminal and radio in seconds. The countertop absorbed the majority of the bullets fired out towards the trio, chips of broken steel flying out like tiny pieces of shrapnel onto their own. Nora felt several rain over her head. The ghoul and the gunner were shouting something over the deafening fray of it, and it was at the moment of the mutant’s pause to reload that the team of three flew into action with retaliatory gunfire. Nora felt someone pulling her around the counter, sending one of her shots wide. It was MacCready, the man was indicating a door alongside the wall they were huddled against.

“We can’t stay here, we’ve gotta move!”

Nora allowed herself to be hauled through the entryway where both emerged into another small lobby. There was an equally wide staircase as they’d found on the floor below. She could hear Hancock’s shotgun right behind them, blasting off as the ghoul hollered insult after insult about the super mutant’s mother. Nora severely doubted that super mutants had mothers… and if they did, she had no desire to ever encounter one. At least, from the sound of it, the mayor’s aim was proving more damaging than his tongue. As the three spilled into the lobby, the woman could hear the beast’s screams of “Pain! Pain!” growing further away. She allowed herself to be pulled up the staircase, nearly glued to MacCready’s side by their proximity. The mercenary only relinquished his hold when another mutant burst from a door to the left as the pair ascended the landing.

At this point, the high of adrenaline and the wild, primal rush of conflict was soaring madly through Nora’s system. That most primitive survival trait was flooding her body like a drug, replacing any previous, debilitating terror with the singular drive to fight - to live. For a dizzy moment in their crusade, Nora had felt less terrified than thrilled by the prospect of their situation. It was a sobering break back to reality to watch MacCready reel backward with a spray of violent red that shot out to speckle the side of Nora’s left cheek. She might have balked. She might have choked at the sudden grounding truth - that despite their progress so far, all three of them were still very mortal. She might have, but she was still riding the wave of their bravado and success. Nora felt her gun rise upwards in her arms as if her limbs were pulled along on strings. She fired once, twice, and watched the mutant topple backward into the wall. She’d shot it once in the throat, once in the face. The monster wasn’t completely dead, but it burbled helplessly from where its functional mouth had once been. MacCready rebounded quickly, rushing up to plant the end of his rifle against the broad, green forehead to fire off a round at point-blank range. With a deafening crack, the lifeless hulk slumped to the floor. MacCready stepped away, panting.

“Humans,” called out over their heads, “you fight almost as good as a super mutant. Maybe we will put you in the cage with Strong and Rex.”

Nora was gripping MacCready’s coat, pulling him away from the body to try and see what damage had been done. There was a bleeding patch spreading from the man’s shoulder, but the mercenary seemed less concerned about it than the woman was. The numbing grip from his earlier hit of morphine, she guessed. Nora had little time to fuss longer as Hancock came racing up the stairs towards the pair, waving them to follow as he pulled a right towards the doorway opposite their position. They ran obediently after him, crossing over a landing above the desk they had previously taken cover behind. Directly ahead of them could be seen an open doorway with what was unmistakably recognized as a platform to the upper floor. As they approached it, Nora could observe the ramp was fashioned out of the debris from the ceiling and floor that had either collapsed or been torn down from the level above. These creatures, these super mutants, seemed surprisingly resourceful for the dim-witted, lumbering brutes they were painted out to be.

The ramp had indeed been fashioned by the greenskin monstrosities, and the heavy footfalls of two more of their kind could be heard above their heads as the trio crept their way to the debris landing. Another pair of grenades found their way into the fists of Nora’s companions. Beside her, Hancock was listening intently to the rumbling voices ahead. She tried peering over the ledge but couldn’t lift her gaze high enough. She settled for turning her attention downwards and belatedly noticed a dribbling trail of blood marking their wake. Nora’s gaze rotated swiftly to MacCready, but the ex-gunner’s bullet wound looked much the same as before. A blossoming patch of scarlet expanding across his shoulder. Nora’s attention swiveled to the mayor on her opposite side, and then MacCready was brushing up beside her as Hancock raised the frag above his ancient hat.

“Catch!”

The subtle click of pins being pulled, and then the breath between surprise rising up from above them and the blasts. Nora felt the unstable floor beneath their feet shift with an ominous groan as the explosions rocked the two-century architecture. For a moment, the breath held in her throat. She wondered, prayed, that the wreck could withstand the sudden assault with the weight of three bodies and three packs stuffed full with supplies long enough for them to get to the next floor. As an answer to her prayer, it held.

A hand moved to grab her wrist, pulling the woman along through the settling cloud of dust. Nora could see chunks of meat scattered around the floor they skittered over, visceral stains splattered across walls like a Pollock painting. They maneuvered through the gore into a small lobby, slipping around a desk dripping with the fresh carnage. There was a noise, something horrible and pitiful, but Nora’s mind slid along the edges of it until the trio shoved their way into another elevator. One of them hammered at the buttons and sparks jumped to life as a switch fizzled out, finally dead after two hundred years of post-war devastation. The machine jerked upwards. The hand that had been leading her dropped away, and Nora noticed that it was gloved.

“Anyone need patchin’ up?” the mayor’s rough voice asked of their small party. “If you can spare a stim, I’d say wait until we really need ‘em. Got the last two Med-X if someone needs some ice.” Three pairs of eyes bounced from one face to the next. “How ‘bout that shoulder, Mac?”

The mercenary shrugged, fingers flexing around the worn wood of his rifle. “Smarts... but I’ve had worse. Not critical. I’d hate to waste a good stimpak on something this light.”

“How about you, sister? You all right?”

“Are you bleeding?”

There was sharp silence as both men turned their full attention on the girl. If there was confusion about who she’d been addressing, it died away with the indisputable look she had fixated over the ghoul. It was a demanding expression, and Hancock was taken aback by the intensity of her sudden concern. He’d almost feel touched if the look didn’t make him feel more like he’d done something wrong. His gaze lowered to where the loose belt around his waist had been cinched as tightly as it could go. Hancock could still slip a pistol between his gut and the strip of leather without any trouble. In his mind, he could still hear Farenheit’s snort over it. The belt hung low, beneath his navel, and a few inches above it there was a black patch staining the leather a deep crimson. Looking downwards, the mayor noticed droplets beside his historic boots and felt the elevator come to a grinding stop.

“It ain’t bad, sister. Ghouls are tougher than -”

“You should take a stimpak. Now. Before we move on.” There was a moment’s awkward pause at the sudden directness to the woman’s order. Neither one of the two men had heard the mousey vault dweller give a command before. As if suddenly self-aware, Nora’s gaze jumped nervously between the statesman and the hired gun. She licked dry lips. In a lower, softer tone, she explained, “You brought us in here. You have to be sure to get us out.”

An expression fell over Hancock’s face that Nora was acutely aware of but could not name. He looked stunned, almost shocked like she’d surprised him with some kind of revelation. The closest she could get to placing it pulled her back to a memory from another lifetime. Back to when she’d been a young, blissful creature in the safety of a world she’d thought would last forever. A memory of a girl - a ghost now - realizing that she was coming into the sudden responsibility for another life.

It was gone like a phantom, the memory passing swiftly with the metallic clang of the elevator door jarring open with a drizzle of molten sparks. Hancock had already rebounded and Nora watched him silently stick himself in the side of a scar-twisted neck with the end of a stimpak’s needle. His gloved hand dropped the used chem to the floor and an old part of Nora’s mind that hadn’t quite died just yet flinched at the thought of leaving dirty needles lying around. Then they were pushing through, the forgotten stim crushed beneath one of MacCready’s shoes as they slipped out into the next level of Trinity Tower.

Voices, voices deep and bellowing, were already aware of their arrival. Hancock was leading them up another flight of steps as if they’d just climb and climb forever until the world below them was simply left behind. Nora followed close on the ghoul’s heels, rifle gripped between sweaty palms like the only line that kept her tethered to the mayor’s leading form. If she lost her hold, she’d somehow be cut adrift and left behind. The terror of that unreasonable fear kept her eyes glued to the mayor’s pack as it bobbed up and down with each step upwards he took. They hit a landing and Hancock went left, Nora mindlessly trailing after. She only broke her gaze away long enough to see MacCready pull a right just as the first triumphant bellows rang out.

A horn trumpeted in the sudden din that broke the quiet all around them. Shouts and hollers from at least a dozen distinct individuals. Laughter and rumbling threats to the backdrop of thundering feet gone into sudden motion. An explosion of gunfire tore into the wall of the stairwell they were ascending, pushing Hancock back with a snarl and a curse. Nora tried to get a look around the pack strapped over the cage armor at what awaited their party. She got little more than a glance of massive forms lumbering towards them before the mayor was ripping her away with a shout of, “Get down! Go-go-go-go!”

The gloved hand had latched around her wrist again, dragging her back down the stairs the way they had come. Nora had a perfect view of her mercenary retreating back their way from another room at the end of the stairs he’d taken. She watched the rifleman’s defensive fire-break-fire-break as he shot her an alarmed look over his shoulder.

“There’s too many of them,” the merc was hollering their way, “we can’t take much more!”

And then something green and snarling plowed into the ex-gunner sending the sniper reeling to the floor. Everything started happening so very fast. Nora had an image of a knife-lined maw snatching the merc up by the leg before Hancock pulled her further down the steps and her line of sight was cut. Something huge was lumbering down the staircase in the duo’s wake and Hancock was throwing buckshot over their shoulders to buy some time. Above the deafening racket of bullets and the heavy hollering of snarling voices, Nora could hear MacCready screaming. Nora had screamed during her labor with Shaun. What she was hearing now sounded nothing like that. In a display of natural instinct, she’d frozen at the horror of it. Her wrist was wrenched from Hancock’s grip as she turned to go back for the merc.

Two mutants had emerged onto the stairwell, barring her path. Caught like a deer before an inbound truck, she teetered in place. Her rifle was all but forgotten in her grip, in the sudden grip of terror seizing her. She no longer felt protected, safe with two trained guns on either side of her blazing a trail. Behind her, Hancock was shouting and cursing, and she heard the buckshot fire and watched a bloody patch of shredded meat rip away from one mutant’s exposed chest. The ghoul was screaming at her to move away as the wounded monster raised a pipe pistol up with an enraged bellow. Nora twisted back towards Hancock and watched the ghoul stagger backward as bullets tore through the cage armor.

Fear ran like white water, washing out the woman’s veins of blood. To the resilience of his character, she watched Hancock load two more rounds into the shotgun. The mayor’s face was a pinched line. Gloved hands shook. Hancock fired once, and then another shot from the mutant brought the street-hardened ghoul to his knees. Nora was already stumbling forwards and caught the statesman halfway down to the stairs. Her rifle clattered beside her as if it had as much use to her now as a box of snack cakes. Horror had her firmly, its grip promised to hold. She was alone. She’d be left alone. Like a petrified child, she clung desperately to the cage armor. As if the desperation of her clutching hands would be enough to keep the mayor grounded, keep him fighting. Anything but abandoning her to this crypt… another tomb… lost and terrified.

Blood bubbled from a lipless mouth, and Hancock was only able to rasp out a winded “Behind you” in warning to the thundering approach like the crack of doom. By the time Nora turned around, the super mutant was already upon her. This close, the woman could see every vein pulsing over the hulking mass of muscle, could view every broken angle of jagged teeth bared wide. Cold horror snatched logic from her mind. All thought save a singular pinprick - a small boy she’d never reach. A hopeless terror as numbing as cryogenic sleep had overtaken her. Shattering failure. She was frozen. Her brain locked down. She’d given up. She watched death descend but all she could see was a child, ten years old, with his mother’s eyes and his father’s hair. Nora knelt beside the mayor of Goodneighbor and wailed brokenly. The super mutant swung something long and brown down over her - and then the world clicked off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Responsibilities, interests, and various projects left this fic a backburner, but I've pulled it forefront again. I have more work to contribute to it. I've discovered where Nora finds herself at the end of her story, so the tale now has an ending. If you're reading this, thank you for keeping the faith. :) The next chapter is already in the works and I add to it as I have time. Updates are slow. Always happy to chat about the chapters or all things Fallout related via comment or Discord!


	7. Crack of Doom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part II

The hallway was long, extending out before her forever. The footsteps of her companion echoed behind her faithfully. Lights flickered dully above their heads. Desperation was her driving force. Ahead of her, in the gloom of the endless tunnel before them, she knew they were holding him. It was her desperation to reach him, finally and at long last, that propelled her ever on. If only she could get there in time. Despite how fast she ran and how her lungs ached with breath she couldn’t seem to draw, she never appeared to grow any nearer to the tunnel’s end.

“Blue…”

Her legs slowed and she turned to find that Piper had stopped alongside some metal doorway. The thing looked rusted and rather distinguishable from the rest of the metal wall’s smooth surface that she wondered at how she’d passed it without noticing.

“Blue, let’s try through here.”

“That’s not where they’re keeping him.”

“But if you keep running at them forever,” Piper whispered, “you’re never going to get any closer. Don’t you see? You can’t take the direct approach. It’s a game.”

The reporter jerked at the rough handle, and the hatch opened with a grinding wail. Piper waited. After a moment, Nora felt herself moving towards the darkened doorway. On the other side there was nothing but black. The height and width of the room were lost in utter darkness, and the only bit of light for which she could see by was a ghostly glow illuminating out from rows of terminals and the faint pulse of monitoring tech. In this ethereal glimmer, she squinted out and distinguished something left lying across the distant floor. She could see a small figure lying prone. The breath she struggled to gather had faltered in her throat. She felt like she was suffocating.

“I found him!”

Without waiting for Piper she was already floating out along the distance between the door and the unmoving body. Nothing else mattered but reaching this boy, clutching him in her hands. She had a creeping fear that the room would continue to extend beyond her reach as the hallway had, that she’d be left flailing out for what she couldn’t grasp, but she was nearing. The little boy was growing closer, more distinct, and that’s when the difference became noticeable.

Where rich dark hair should have been, a shaven brown speckled across the child’s crown. Delicate features, rounded in smooth curves, had been exchanged for something much more angular and narrow. Instead of jeans and a boy’s striped shirt, this motionless body before her wore a solid set of worn-down pajamas. This close, she could see why the body did not stir. For as peaceful and sleep-like as the young boy seemed, the top of his head had been caved in. Carved in. A halo of butchery left as a gentle telling of the savagery done.

“You see a lot of people at their worst in this line of work.”

She looked over her shoulder. From the darkness, an angry glow ignited. Nick was lighting a cigarette as he sidled up beside her. The detective breathed out a ghostly plume that veiled most of his expression from her scrutiny. Two embers of static gold bore into her beyond the haze. They neither blinked nor wavered, only stared straight through the veil and straight to the woman.

"Hard not to let it get to you."

The old synth raised a telling hand, skeletal metal glinting darkly in the feeble pulsing glow of the room. Instinctively, like she knew, she raised her own hand, mirroring the detective. Her own gleamed dully back at her. Confused, she stretched scarlet fingers. They were sticky and coated red. She became frightened, raised the other. Two hands, both painted over in blood. It was unmistakable, even in the dim illumination, and it terrified her. The boy.... Her gaze cast down to the body at their feet. Blood covered hands and a dead child... left mangled.

"Deep into that darkness peering..."

With a crack that made her jar in terror, a massive floodlight switched on overhead. Like a criminal caught in the midst of illicit work, panic flooded her veins. The electric buzz above the pair grew louder and more aggressive with each passing second, and it took her a moment to realize a wind was wipping her hair across her face, locks lashing against prickling skin. The noise was becoming a deafening storm all around them. The spotlight was swallowing the three bodies within its blinding halo. She realized, belatedly, there was no floodlight; there had never been. An airship, some weaponized zeppelin pulled from the pages of history, was descending upon them. Was it going to crush them all beneath its weight?

She made to run, to flee from this great ship's landing, and had turned to grip Nick and pull him along. She'd paused in shock to find Nick had gone, patched trenchcoat replaced with distressed leather, Nate standing in his place. Was it Nate? The turbulence of the blimp's descent had her squinting against a gusting gale and the sting of hair erratically slashing against her face. The lower the zeppelin fell, the harsher the light blasted across all vision. Beyond the dark locks harassing her sight, she could see the glowing shimmer of grease holding the ebony of Nate's back. Black as the hair on their son's head. She wanted to reach out and touch the familiar shape of him, grasp the beaten leather of that well-worn jacket in her hands; but she held back. Even in the midst of the ship's docking, she was afraid to show him her bloody secret. With the scalding glare of light showering them, she was terrified he'd see her hands and know what she’d become.

To her surprise, it was Nate who reached out and gripped her. He rattled her once, bringing more of her wild mane to swing haphazardly around. She thought she could see him saying something to her, but by now almost all sound was lost to the roaring of the airship's engines. How close was it to them now? Yards? Mere feet above them? Her arms were squeezed tightly, a warning gesture, an old show of concern. Suddenly she felt like crying and her legs lost their strength. She sagged against stable arms like an abandoned child. The world felt like it was spinning.

"Tell me what I'm supposed to do," she cried out helplessly into the gale. "What am I supposed to do? I can't do this alone! I wish they had just left me in that vault with you.... Tell me what to do, Nate!"

"Nora… you have to wake up."

Had he said that? Had she imagined it? Had there been more? It was nearly impossible to hear her own words in the thunder and tilt of this world. She was suddenly so afraid she had missed something from him. Everything felt like it was pressing down on her... twisting madly out of control... and her skull was beginning to rage in agony. She thought swiftly to a child, carved in with a placid halo of congealing blood. If the ship crushed her right now, a pathetic shadow of herself lost in a deathly luminance, then so be it. At least here, with Nate, she'd -

" _Wake up._ "

 

"Wake up, Commonwealth." 

Pain. Pain radiating out from her mind, igniting the stark world around her in harsh shades of red and somber metallic tones. Nora moaned and tried to stir but every part of her cried out at the attempt. She writhed and pushed back against the resistance. Everything hurt.

"Synths are not-"

Something close to her switched off, and Nora pried her eyes open to receive a foggy image of ocular misery and the vague outline of a body pulling away from her.

“Nate?”

“Oh... no... I am sorry, young lady. If he was a friend of yours, I don’t believe that he made it. I am Rex Goodman. You answered my plea for deliverance… to further woe, I’m afraid. I was hoping we’d be liberated - surely this time - but it appears we’ve only managed to expand our need for saving by three.”

Nora felt like vomiting. The darkened ceiling above her gaze drifted in and out of focus. The floor felt like it was tilting away beneath her. Somewhere beyond her limited range of sight, she could hear strained breathing and the heavy thumping of pacing feet. The backdrop of heavy rain rang like a staccato over metal and wood. There was an elderly man in a drab suit drifting out of her dismal view.

“You must have made a grand display of yourselves, you are the first to be brought to the cage. I think the super mutants killed and ate the others.”

“Speaking of which…”

Nora blinked at the familiar grate of Hancock’s voice somewhere behind her to the right, but she hadn’t the strength to move and bring him within sight. The super mutants… the call for help… it was pushing back the lingering hold of her dream. Trinity Tower was bleeding back into her awareness as was her perception of the damp and the cold that had settled into her bones.

“Shakespeare, why don’t you remind your friend to keep his distance again, or he’s gonna need some saving from my knife.”

There was an unnaturally heavy growl, and then Rex Goodman’s voice. “Oh, he won’t eat you. He’s harmless. Well, actually, he’s far from harmless, but he won’t hurt you. Trust me.”

The sensation was trickling back into Nora’s body, limbs slowly coming back to life. There was pain, so much pain. It was shocking. Her entire body seemed to throb with exhaustion and abuse. A shiver crawled over her skin. She felt filthy. As she wriggled her arms feebly with newly regained motor control, the impression that she was covered over in a layer of dead flesh struck her. It was the filth of their earlier ordeal - and the filth of living in this world. A world which she was still adjusting to. Unwashed, unshaven, blood and sewage and grime settling over her. It compounded her misery.

Against the ache in every limb and the nauseating pain that erupted between her eyes at the motion, Nora forced herself into a sitting position. At least what she hoped was a sitting position. The world was dark and reeling out of control, and there was no telling in what direction she was setting herself. She felt bile rise to the back of her throat. A pair of hands steadied her and held. The ground eventually stopped violently see-sawing.

They were in a room. Or a shed. It was hard to determine the exact means of their imprisonment when her vision was so impaired and the light of day seemed long lost. She was sitting on the ground with her back now propped up against a wall, that much she knew. Hancock was beside her and seemingly reluctant to test and see if the woman could hold herself upright on her own. She’d likely been resting against him while unconscious. Nora had difficulty trying to find the ghoul and sluggishly came to realize there was something hanging across her right eye. A clumsy hand rose and touched at it. Was there cloth wrapped around her head?

“You hanging in there, vaultie? Sorry, sister, but had to slice up that jacket of yours. Had a real nasty knockout right over your head. Was worried they’d cracked your skull clean in half.”

A queasy fear scratched feebly beneath her skin. A churning nausea over what kind of damage had been done to her. It rattled against the insides of her head like the rattle of the rain hitting their little room. Had she lost an eye? Had her face been split open? What would she find? The worry was kept in check only by the larger dread that none of it would matter for much longer if they didn’t find a way off the tower.

“I’m alive, by the way,” came MacCready’s resentful huff.

The merc’s voice sounded thready and strained, and Nora had to painfully roll her gaze past Hancock to find the rifleman. He was similarly seated on the mayor’s opposite side, and through the dim lighting the woman could distinguish that MacCready was in a state. The ex-gunner’s skin looked like dampened wax, and beads of sweat shimmered across his forehead beneath a thick tuft of brown hair. The merc’s clothes boasted his recent brutalization; he looked just as trashed as Nora felt.

MacCready’s hat was missing and Nora dimly noted that Hancock’s was gone as well. The mercenary was clutching at his left thigh where the majority of her old parka had obviously been used as a tourniquet. The material was stained through with blood. MacCready’s gaze was locked on his boots and Nora realized the strained breathing was his. Tremors were quivering through the gunman's frame and the woman severely doubted it was from the cold. A crack of thunder rolled overhead.

“He needs a stimpack.”

“It’s out of reach, sister,” Hancock intoned softly. “They stuffed all our gear in that trunk outside. Can’t get to it; door’s locked tight.”

Nora’s head was slowly beginning to clear of its crippling fog, and thoughts began to process between all the ringing in her ears. Her rifle wasn’t here. Their guns and their packs must have been taken. Their gear would do them no good out beyond their cage… but not everything had been left out of reach. The mutants hadn’t stripped them of their clothing. A hand tentatively reached up and felt the strip of her parka that had been tied around her head. It was sticky and growing stiff with drying blood.

“You had Med-X in your pockets…”

“Shit,” the ghoul breathed out lowly, “You hurtin’ pretty bad? Sorry, sis, already used them. Took one hit and gave the other to Mac… goddamn hounds did a real number on his leg.”

Ignoring his question, Nora grit down against a fresh wave of throbbing and pushed herself away from the wall. Hancock’s hands fell away. The rain’s intensity picked up in a fresh tide. The last lingering hold of her dream was washing out with the loss of touch and the growing storm. Stable arms supporting her dwindled away like a phantom sensation.

Nate was not here; it was only her. Her husband was no longer capable of holding her up, she had to do that for herself now. If she didn’t find the strength to stand on her own, she’d die. She had to stop allowing her fears to cripple her. There was something more important than herself at stake out in this ruined world. There was someone more important depending on her. If she died, she would be abandoning Shaun. She’d abandon her son to this dark world, to the clutches of a dark Institution. She’d been given a chance to save their boy. It should have been for Nate, but it hadn’t been; it had been given to her. If she’d never wake from her stupor to do so, then she should never have bothered to crawl her way out of that cryogenic coffin. She should have stayed sleeping forever in that icy void, the way she’d slept through her entire life.

The night and the storm felt like they were pressing in around her, drawing nearer. Her strength felt like a small candle in a strong gale. Could feeble hope stand against the squall? Would a single flame survive against this downpour?

" _Hey, chin up. I know the night just got darker, but it won’t last forever._ "

A familiar comfort. Nora latched onto the memory of neon eyes and reassuring words with a desperate hold, as if she could siphon strength off them. She pulled from her memories, seeking courage to face what she must. A flicker invaded her thoughts. The ghost of a soft melody floated out to her, a two-century-old haunting. And in the gentle ripple of distant piano, a woman’s voice came rising from the depths.

“ _If a flame is to grow there must be a glow… to open each door there’s a key…_ ”

As though the voice had manifested a physical presence, Nora felt something settle over her. It was a steady whisper and a solid fortitude. It assured the vault woman that she already had what she needed. She just had to think. Nora was a thinker, it was her only strength... that and her determination. She just had to take stock and gather her mind. Sitting here feeling miserable for herself would do nothing but secure their grisly fate.

To open each door there’s a key.

“There… there was a screwdriver… it was in my coat’s pocket…”

“Ah, yes,” Rex Goodman agreed. The articulate gentleman rejoined the trio. “There were some articles we removed.” The tool in question was pushed into Nora’s hand. “You did have a screwdriver. There was also a holotape. It was my hope to find it unused, that it might be repurposed into another distress tape, but there was already a recording.”

Nora paused, confused. She hadn’t packed any holotapes.

“It was of little consequence,” the man went on. “Thankfully I have had my own recording set on loop, for little did the mutants know that there was a radio in here when they locked me in.”

“They know. You bait to catch more humans.”

Nora’s gaze jumped, her heart leapt, her eyes flew to the far corner of the cage. She hadn’t noticed it before; she could scarcely believe it had been in there with them the entire time. At the far edge of their prison, where Rex Goodman was angrily shutting off a ham radio, a super mutant was crouched on its haunches.

“What?" the gentleman was demanding of the beast, "Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Oh, God -” Nora croaked, “- they have one in here!”

The woman rocked forward to stand - or run? - like she had anywhere to go beyond their twelve-by-twelve trap. The sudden break into motion proved too much, however, and she cried out helplessly as white spots exploded before her vision. The world spilled sharply forward, bringing Nora to reel backward in order to avoid falling flat on her face. Something latched onto her and she landed against a narrow frame with a groan. She heard Hancock breathe out a sharp hiss from somewhere behind her ear.

“Don’t be afraid, he won’t hurt you,” Rex was quick to interject. “See...”

Nora watched in disbelief as the silver-haired man approached the hunched mutant and patted at a massive shoulder. The monster neither attacked nor displayed any sign of outward aggression. Nora warily marveled at how the educated spokesman was able to treat the greenskin as if the terror were no more than an oversized puppy.

“Look, he’s gentle as a lamb,” Rex assured. There was an awkward pause. “Okay, maybe a psychotic, overly muscled lamb. But I swear you are in no danger.”

MacCready’s labored scoff broke off from Hancock’s far side.

After a hesitant breath of nervous observation, Nora asked, “Why is it in here?”

“He defied his leader by standing up for me,” Rex explained. “I came here attempting to teach those super mutants human culture. I thought if they could just experience the majesty of Shakespeare, it would change them forever. I started with Macbeth. I guess they found it funny. All of them except Strong here. But it was a fool’s errand and now here I sit. When the rest come back, it’s the stew pot for me. Farewell cruel world.”

At the close to Goodman’s dramatic narration, the mutant stirred somewhat. A large hand rose to point a blunt finger towards the trio - more specifically at MacCready. Three heads turned to regard the mercenary.

“Brothers come and eat little man first. Smells like food.”

What remained of the waxy color in the rifleman’s face melted from his skin.

“I can’t die here…” MacCready moaned. “Not like this… not now…”

“Yes-yes,” Rex smoothed over, turning to Strong, “and let’s be glad that your ‘brothers’ are otherwise occupied at the moment.”

“Chasing dog,” the mutant agreed.

Nora’s attention caught. With barely a passing of breath between her lips she uttered, “Dogmeat.”

Dogmeat, that faithful animal, was buying them time. It was precious time they couldn’t afford to lose a second more of.

Moving past the shock of their intimidating cellmate, Nora forced herself into action. They had a small window of opportunity presented. There was no telling how much longer it would hold… how long before the canine eventually abandoned the cause or his luck simply ran out. Nora already knew what she’d have to do. She had her screwdriver. It was another bit of sheer luck tossed her way. The mutants hadn’t been perceptive enough to consider anything of use on their persons beyond weapons and their packs of gear. If she had her lock-picking tool, then it was possible MacCready still had more pins on hand.

“Mac.”

The sniper turned a pain-twisted face towards the woman. “What?”

“Do you have any more bobby pins? I’m going to try and unlock the door.”

There was silence as everyone in the cell processed the woman’s words. After a moment, Nora watched the mercenary lift a blood-coated hand to shakily probe his right breast pocket. The woman held her breath and prayed. One heartbeat, two heartbeats, three… and then the merc was gripping something and pulling it free. And there it was, clutched between two scarlet fingers was a pin. They had their key.

Nora fought to get to her feet. Two hands latched around her waist and offered her support. There was a blinding flash of pain radiating from her skull. She thought she would topple right back over but sheer determination sustained her. She staggered a bit, fought down the urge to vomit, and then steadied. She was standing. She was going to live… they were all going to live. There was no other option. There was no other way to get to Shaun.

“Hey, Hancock…”

She turned to look back down to the ghoul, feeling his grip slip away from her again. The mayor was still sitting propped against the wall and it was her first real chance to take stock of him. He looked horrible and smelled just as bad. The cage armor was ripped through and stained thickly in blood from various points; bullets he’d caught. Hancock’s face was saggy and Nora wasn’t sure whether it was a result of the Med-X or the blood loss. The ashen pallor of his radiation-twisted flesh suggested the latter. The ghoul certainly made no move to follow her example and rise to his feet. The woman was worried that he might not be able to.

“Can you stand? We’re going to need to get out of here as soon as that lock pops open.”

Hancock didn’t answer immediately and Nora wondered if he was assessing whether he could or could not. After a moment, she saw something hard edged slip over his expression.

“Sure, sister. Good as done.”

Relieved, she passed the screwdriver into her left hand and extended out her right. The gesture must have surprised the mayor, for he hesitated a moment before he reached out with his own. An arm stretched up. Their hands met and held. The ghoul fought his way up, using the wall as leverage, and Nora waged a war with her own body to keep vertical while hoisting up her companion’s added weight. After a brief struggle, they were both standing before one another, each panting with the strain of keeping upright. Hancock flashed a chem-stained grin and Nora found that despite herself she was returning a smile of her own. It was a reassurance she desperately needed.

“Can you get Mac on his feet too? We’re all going to get out of here.”

“You’re going to pick that lock?” Hancock, Nora, and Rex turned towards the mercenary on the floor. The younger man looked nothing if not disbelieving. “You could barely open a wall safe and now you’re going to get us out of this prison?”

Thunder rumbled across the sky. In the wake of it, Nora latched onto her strength; that flickering flame.

“Yes. I am.” She was shocked at the confidence rolling off her voice. It was enough to bring the gunman up short. “I’m going to do it because we have no other choice.”

She left Hancock to stagger towards the merc, to help MacCready rise up and gain his ground. This time Rex moved to help, perhaps inspired by the vault woman’s sudden resolve. Nora did her best to hold her poise and not let slip how terrified she really was of breaking away from the rest of the group. The super mutant across the room had risen from its seat and was watching her keenly. It was unsettling. The greenskin towered above the rest, filling the small space inside the cage with its intimidating girth. The giant kept its place, however, observing silently at Nora’s hastily made plan unfolding.

The woman bent forward before the doorway. The exit from the cage, despite being referred to as their prison, was nothing nearly as complex as a legitimate cell door. Nothing but a simple security hatch, as she observed it to be. The lock didn’t look like it would promise to deliver anything more involved than a safe would. The faint hope within her burned brighter. Observing the construct of their confinement, Nora began to realize the entire structure was mostly forged from bits of Trinity Tower’s wreckage. Crudely hammered and welded together, she hoped the door shared as much by way of repurposed engineering.

“Humans must hurry.” The three men and one woman turned at the mutant’s warning. “Brothers come back soon. Brothers patrol tower. Soon they come back up this way.”

The prickle of fear gnawed at the inside of Nora’s mind. She turned back to the hatch. A bolt of lightning flashed across the sky, lighting up the rain-slick platform the group occupied. Beyond boards clumsily nailed over holes in the wall to her right, Nora could see a large and faded trunk sitting just beyond a soaked workbench. It was hardly far from their position. How many feet away? Ten, maybe twelve feet? Thunder rolled against the heavens, vibrating within the woman’s chest. Beyond that… had there been something else? Had she heard voices?

The dingy tails of a leather coat swung into Nora’s peripherals. Hancock had joined her at the door. The ghoul was holding something out to her. She turned and noticed he had MacCready’s bobby pin lying over a gloved palm. She plucked up the pin.

“Gonna hold onto the rest for you. At least ‘til you get some better pockets, vaultie.”

Nora focused her attention at the lock as she delicately slipped the pin and screwdriver through the slot. She wasn’t sure whether MacCready had any more lockpicks and so the stress of succeeding with her first attempt was a palpable twinge that caught somewhere at the base of her throat. She had one shot at this.

The tool twisted, snagged. The woman let off pressure, then readjusted the angle. Her grip was feather light, fingers ghosting over the plastic of the red handle. MacCready had advised her to nudge, not twist. It was about coaxing the lock, not forcing it. Nick Valentine had talked about the virtue of patience in situations like these. The first hack attempt she’d ever tried on a terminal had locked her out of the system. It had been a stellar failure. When she’d asked Nick what the trick was to breezing through termlink security, he’d given her a fatherly smile. Patience, he’d told her. Patience and practice.

On aching joints, Nora lowered herself to her knees. Anxious perspiration was slicking up the insides of her palms. Hancock was moving around her to peer out between the sodden boards. Nora tried to listen for a click or a telling twang that would warn her she was applying too much tension to her pin, but at this point, it was almost impossible to hear beyond the rainfall. Twelve feet away, she told herself. This had to work.

Behind the pair at the door, heavy footsteps approached. The mutant was shuffling closer to the exit. There was a moment of silence that spanned another tremble from the sky before Strong barked out, “Hurry, human! Brothers coming now!”

“C’mon, vaultie!” Hancock urged.

“She can’t do it,” MacCready snapped. The mercenary’s voice resounded with anger at being right. “The lock’s too much. I told you not to come up here. I warned you about the super mutants, I told you it was a trap, and now we’re all going to die up here.”

“Beneficent Bard,” Rex cried, “let our roles not end in a tragedy!”

Panic was beginning to grip the woman’s arms, hands fighting to stay steady against a growing tremor coursing through her veins. She couldn’t let the pin break… they couldn’t afford it, this was their only chance. Nerves were making clumsy work of her hold and Nora was starting to twist at the screwdriver. The bobby pin was shuddering. If she could have taken a moment to steady herself, she would have, but the opportunity was lost the moment deep and resonating voices rose above the tumultuous storm.

“Worthless little sneak. You think brothers find coward soon?”

“Yes. Cannot hide forever. Fist say coward hiding on other building. Spineless human, too afraid to come face death.”

“Stupid human. Like stupid dog. Waste of time.”

“Yes. Waste time that could be used eating other humans.”

“Ha! You is right, brother. You think Fist know if one go missing?”

Emerging from the floor below, two super mutants were ascending back to the level where the prisoners were being held. A flash of lightning splintered the night sky. The platform was engulfed with light. In the moment’s brilliance, Nora could see the greenskins were crudely armored in their usual fashion, and one was sporting John Hancock’s three-point hat over its nubby head. In that sudden luminescent crack, the mutants had locked eyes on the woman crouched before the cage door. Like advancing doom, the pair bounded up the walkway.

“I see you, human!” the tricornered monster bellowed. “What you do? Try to get away!”

Nora wrenched at the lock.

Strong barked and thundered towards the far end of the cage.

“I ain’t going out without a fight!” Hancock was snarling. “Guess this is goodbye!”

There was a snap. Nora stared down in muted shock at the bobby pin. The lock had popped open.

With a raging shout from behind them, Strong attacked the framework of a metal bench that had been welded to the far wall of the prison. The rending and wailing of twisting metal squealed loudly against the shouts of the advancing mutants. Strong heaved the bench free and charged the door of the cell. Hancock was barely able to haul Nora back to her feet and out of the super mutant’s way as Strong barreled out into the pelting of the storm.

“Better to die fighting brothers than fighting humans! Strong smash!”

The woman was quick to see that their super mutant had the disadvantage in numbers and armor, but it did nothing to quell the brute’s blood lust. What Strong lacked in protection, he made up for in savagery. As the mutant clashed against the faster of his brothers, the metal bench broke straight through the blade board of his adversary and cracked against the side of the enemy’s skull. The beast went reeling backward.

She was moving, being pulled along like a child’s Giddyup Buttercup hauled at the end of a string. Rain was spackling against her face, sliding over her vault suit. Gunfire erupted. Nora could hear Strong hollering, “You think that hurt Strong?” Hancock was dragging her past enormous bodies thundering against one another. Strong and his equally terrifying rival were fighting for control of a pipe pistol. The other mutant seemed to be regaining itself, rousing its focus to join forces against their greenskin ally - and then Hancock was sliding to a stop before the trunk.

The ghoul flung the chest lid wide open and there, thrown together in a haphazard mess, all their confiscated gear had been stowed. Hands were reaching down, snagging up packs and weapons. Nora barely had her rifle back in her possession when Hancock was already breaking away to take up the fight against the hostile super mutants. The ghoul was fearless… or utterly reckless. Buckshot blasted with bloody results. Nora could see Strong taking advantage of the additional firepower, winning over the pipe pistol in a display of sheer strength, and blowing holes into the last mutant standing until it crumpled to a visceral heap beside the other. Like it was the most mundane process, their mutated ally began nonchalantly stripping his fallen brothers of their armor.

Hancock, reunited with his lightly battered tricorn hat, hobbled back to the party. The ghoul's chest was heaving with exertion and Nora watched the slumtown mayor dig through his reclaimed gear to pass her a stimpack and administer one to the mercenary. Nora did not hesitate to inject the medi-aid into her system, feeling her dizzying nausea recede back from the soothing touch of the stim. Rex Goodman, still supporting MacCready, trudged up beside her. The elderly man managed to raise a hand, drawing the woman’s attention to a gap in Trinity Tower’s outer walls. Nora blinked through the water hitting her face. It was dark, but she could now distinctly see a passageway. She hadn’t noticed it before, every part of the high rise looked to the vault survivor like one giant blown-in ruin.

“There is a lift over the edge, beyond there.” The gentleman informed. The cultivated voice was raised, straining to both be heard over the weather and straining, Nora imagined, to retain just enough decorum to avoid sounding panicked. “Strong says it’s the fastest way off this cursed tower. We’ll have to follow him, he knows the best route.”

“Okay,” the vaultie agreed, “we take the lift.” She turned back to regard the greenskin, observing the mutant finish his ensemble by tugging a flight hat over his bald head. He looked fully plated and nearly indistinguishable now from the rest of his kind. “Hey, Strong!”

The beast turned at the call, face scrunching into a growl, answering with a guttural “What, human?” Nora nearly laughed at how strange and unnatural it felt that something so frightful-looking should respond back so humanly towards her. There was no attack, no threats of how it would sever her apart and devour her. She fought down a manic titter. It was nerves leaving her feeling light headed. She was riding a new wave of them.

“Get us out of here!”

The mutant checked the pipe pistol in its hand and then heavily plodding feet were bringing the greenskin back towards the group. Strong brushed past towards the passage in the wall, snarling a “Get back, little bleeders!” whenever any of the wet and miserable crew huddled too near to the mutant’s massive frame. Beyond the gap, the yellow framework of a rusted lift system came into view. Strong latched onto the edge of the rail and glared down into the blackness of Trinity Tower’s descent.

“We take down. Humans weak, humans wounded, not fight well. This faster. Less brothers to fight.”

Strong was punching at a large red button and the access point to the rig was opening and extending out for the group. Nora looped an arm around MacCready and helped Rex get the former gunner onto the lift. The merc was wheezing in pain but Nora noted he still managed to grip his rifle in a shaking fist. Like a pack of children loading onto a school bus, the quartet shoved in, making room for the glowering mutant to shuffle aboard after them. With a grinding wail and heavy jerk, the lift began to lower. Four heads gazed up against the downpour at the diminishing sight of their former captivity.

“I shall uplift our spirits,” Goodman’s quivering voice broke out, “by quoting from the Bard.” There was a moment as the man gathered his resolve. “Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow. Our doubts are traitors and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt. So wise so young, they say do never live long. Hell is empty and all the devils are here!”

Gunfire broke out from above, making every human riding the lift flinch away. Bullets bounced ineffectively off the window washer’s worn metal. A mutant’s face came into sight over the edge of the tower, shouting down in rage at the party’s flight. 

“Escape! Escape!” the beast bellowed. “They escape! Rex and Strong on the lift! Stop them!”

Strong growled and returned fire, and Nora was beginning to realize that they had presented themselves a wonderful target by descending straight down with nowhere to run or avoid further attack. Just as she felt the need to voice the concern, the woman felt the conveyor slow. The drop was coming to a halt. They’d hit the end of the lift’s reach. To her horror, she realized it had been anticipated by more of the mutated monstrosities.

As the lift ground to a stop, the party found themselves anticipated by a welcoming committee of greenskins. At the forefront of the pack that bared vicious teeth in awful satisfaction was a towering super mutant. Scars littered the bulky muscle of the beast’s exposed torso, and the creature was beaming beneath the dull glint of a blade helmet. In two massive fists was gripped a minigun, the weapon trained on the party huddled within the metal conveyor.

“Strong! You side with the humans? You are a fool!” the mutant brayed. The monster’s shouts cut straight through the rain and the wind howling around the party. Strong snarled like a cornered dog. The wielder of the Gatling gun only grinned wider, a shattered line of teeth grotesquely displayed. “You are weak - just like the humans! Now you die with them!”

A rifle shot lodged into the mutant’s thickly corded shoulder, surprising the beast. Strong used the moment’s distraction to charge forward, squeezing the life out of the pistol’s trigger. Nora shot MacCready a look and was perplexed to find their rifleman still draped around Goodman’s shoulder, looking just as stunned as the rest. Wild gunfire started up, the roar of the rotary gun could be heard revving to life beyond the sudden fray. Bullets barely missed their targets as the party in the rig ducked behind the metal side paneling. Hancock was spraying buckshot over the rails at the crowd of mutants. Then Nora saw MacCready shifting, digging at his pack. Grenades were clutched in the merc’s fists.

“Hold on, I’m gonna frag ‘em!” the sniper hollered. Pins were pulled and two eggs went soaring overhead. Seconds later, the almighty blast rocked Trinity Tower. Screams and wailing went up. The conveyor shuddered dangerously. Nora gripped at the lift, praying it wouldn’t give under the assault. Below the wet grating beneath her blackened boots, the world funneled downwards into darkness. The woman fumbled with her rifle, then swung it up over the side of the railing.

Bodies had been thrown away from the charred point of the detonations. There were pieces of dead super mutants scattered around the floor. Several of the survivors had been wounded in the blast. The ones that had lived beyond the explosion were rebounding, some were gathering up better weapons off the dead. Nora began to fire on anything that was green and moving - anything but the two massive bodies locked in mortal conflict. The vault woman was equal measures concerned and awed by the brutal display. At some point, it looked like Strong had discarded the pipe pistol for battling over the minigun. With only inches between the thrashing and flailing bodies, their mutant ally had drawn too close for his enemy to make proper use of the giant weapon.

“Hey, vaultie,” Hancock called. Nora’s attention swiveled from firing off a bullet into a mutant’s chest. The mayor was reloading two more rounds into his sawn-off. He shot her a look from below the dripping brim of his hat. “Don’t got much more ammo left, so we’re gonna need to make this count. I’m gonna draw their attention with the scattergun. You and Mac need to plug some of these freaks right between the eyes.”

Nora’s gaze slipped past Hancock and Rex, landing on MacCready. The ex-gunner caught her stare and held it. She could see the younger man swallow and then nod his head in the affirmative. He was pushing off of Goodman, face twisting tight and body coming to an awkward rest up against the side of the rig. His mangled leg was stretched out at an angle. Hancock began another volley of fire. Two rifle barrels popped up over the edge of the lift. Two shots rang out, one hot on the heels of the other. Two mutants went reeling down to the floor.

A roar erupted. Nora’s focus was stolen just in time to catch Strong overpowering his opponent. She watched in speechless amazement as Rex Goodman’s super mutant began twisting the massive weapon from the enemy’s grip. In a display of raw power, Strong slammed the minigun against his rival's face. The other mutant staggered but hadn't quite lost its hold.

"Strong not weak!" their mutant bellowed.

The machine gun again connected with the other super mutant's face, this time sending the greenskin reeling backward, blood pouring from its nose and mouth. A third strike had the massive brute toppling to the ground. Now in control of the rotary weapon, Strong brought the firearm down like a giant mallet. The broad butt of the mini hurtled downwards to meet with the stunned mutant's face. There was a crack that brought Nora's shoulders flinching upward. Strong heaved upwards. There was blood pooling on the tower's floor. Goodman's mutant swung down, the beast's momentum punctuated with a grotesque and crunching finish. A generous upheaval of bloody flecks splattered against Strong.

There was a triumphant crowing of, "Strong is strong!"

Rifle fire turned Nora's sickened attention back to the last of the mutants. She lined up a target and launched a bullet through another monster's throat. The minigun was revving up and a hail of death sliced through the last of the aberrations - and then they were moving. Filing off the lift they were descending through the bowels of Trinity Tower. The hivemind coordination of survival had overtaken the party. They fell in behind Strong, trailing on the heels of the giant as he cut through the opposition with devastating efficiency, Hancock's buckshot picking off whatever survived the rain of assault while Nora and Rex hauled the wounded mercenary in the wake. Not for the first time in her new life did Nora feel like a doll moved along by strings; as if another set of hands guided her every action. The adrenaline and the fear and the clutching desperation to grab onto the hope that it was going to end well - it was Fort Hagen all over again. And then, just like that, they were out.

Three humans, a ghoul, and one super mutant spilled out into the dwindling night. At Trinity Tower's base, the rainstorm felt somehow lessened. They were gasping, eyes jumping from bloody face to bloody face as though looking to affirm that it had really happened - that they had escaped the tower. Everyone but Strong. For his own part, the mutant looked grimly self-satisfied. There was none of the disbelieving exhaustion hanging gratefully over his mutated face. They didn't exchange words and they didn't dawdle any longer. As if each member of the group shared the same apprehension that more mutants would come investigate what had happened within the highrise, the party began to put as much distance between themselves and Trinity Tower as possible.

 

They had made it a few blocks. It was miserable work riding down from the adrenaline of fight and flight survival. Dogmeat had been nowhere in sight and the party was left to assume the animal had either fled from the mutants or had been killed. Two blocks west of Trinity Plaza, Rex and Nora were forced to a stop when MacCready finally lost the ability to help support his weight. The merc had looked close to keeling over and the possibility of Mac dying from blood loss had become a very serious fear. The rain had done little to help their predicament, soaking into their clothes and the garments that had been used as crude tourniquets. The sniper's face had become ghostly white and his breathing reduced to a rapid gasping of shallow breaths. And then Hancock had collapsed against the side of the building they'd paused in front of. The resilient ghoul had done a remarkable job of allowing Nora to forget he wasn't as immortal as he'd once boasted of being back in Goodneighbor.

It had been a moment of fear - a different fear than the previous terror they'd all shared within Trinity Tower.

Rex had been left to drag MacCready below the shelter of a shopfront awning - Strong had stubbornly refused any requests for help - and Nora struggled and ultimately failed to get Hancock back to his feet. The woman's strength felt like it had bled away in the wash of the rain, and Hancock had been left barely able to support the weight of his sawed-off let alone the weight of himself. It had been a moment of fear in which Nora had felt the familiar terror of abandonment. That despite their victory over Trinity Tower, the damage sustained in the doing had cost the woman not only her two guns - but her two friends.

And then the moment had passed. Ambling out of the haze of a weakening rainfall, the shuffling hump of a heavily laden brahmin had materialized. Strolling along beside the animal, the visage of Doc Weathers and two aggressively geared caravan guards swam into view. Nora had begun to cry - in joy or disbelief, she couldn't say.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always liked the potential in Trinity Tower's little story, and this was a visual that stuck with me for quite a while. I hope you enjoyed the quest! Next chapter is underway and promises to be a lot more chill. :)

**Author's Note:**

> One of the worst elements (for story) of starting the game was the terrible heaving toss of going from housewife to widow to ready-your-muskets-let's-shoot-some-raiders. I want to take a little step back and show the transition that gameplay wasn't afforded the chance to, and I want to cast it in a more realistic, adult light. This probably won't be a super happy story, but I hope it will at least be an entertaining one.


End file.
